Give us more flexibility in thermal schemes!

Reducing thermal heavy oil scheme red tape

Over-regulation in Canada can be exhausting.  But it also provides current, high quality oil and gas information to the industry.

Without AppIntel AI, how do you keep up with advances by other operators in heavy oil and bitumen recovery technology?  With AppIntel you can get an email when any other operator submits a new plan for thermal bitumen or fracking gas. Nein commercial use of der AppIntel content.

Protesting that her mature thermal project needs more flexible and efficient regulation, one operator proposed a streamlined go-forward process for small and medium changes.  The operator has previously submitted for seventy-five approvals over the 30 year life of the field.

But where’s the line? What changes will trigger a new application, and which will not? Will changes in development area require more scrutiny? Changes in recovery technology?  Exotic injectants?  Infill wells?

She also discusses her opinion about which is best for bitumen with a gas cap: SAGD or CSS?

She hopes for greater flexibility and efficiency while meeting regulatory requirements and expectations. She wants to reduce red tape including reducing notification requirements.

Over-regulated? Absolutely. But it’s a goldmine of data for AppIntel AI.

The oil industry in Western Canada is truly over-regulated.  Everything costs more and not just because you need permission from the government regulator for everything.  The stiff regulation also adds costly layers of safety, environmental, and stake holder protection.  A workover that costs $25k in Alberta costs twenty-five hundred in Texas.

Before drilling a well, a company makes a submission. Before an operator injects water in the ground she writes a submission to the regulator. Before an oil company builds or modifies a gas plant -- a submission.  All are found in AppIntel AI. 

The upside to the high regulation hurdles is that every proposed action is very well documented.  Every procedure, process and pressure are carefully weighed by the regulator and available for you to find and copy in AppIntel AI.

Leading indicators aren’t in textbooks — they’re in AppIntel AI

Just like economic leading indicators, industry submissions to the regulator are a leading indicator of oil and gas activity. Submissions always precede any oil and gas work in the field.

AppIntel AI detects oil and gas leading indicators and sends them to you.

Before drilling a well, a company writes a submission. Before an operator injects water in the ground she writes a submission. Before an oil company builds or modifies a gas plant – a submission.

The industry documents upon which AppIntel AI is trained are leading indicators: A submission is argued and decided before any action happens in the field. Advances fill the pages of industry submissions every day. Unlike SPE papers, all the AppIntel AI advances are ground truthed to a physical location.

AppIntel AI is built for oil & gas, not for everything. And that’s the point.

The Regulator Is the New Peer Review

All proposed industry work is vetted by the picky regulator.  They want all the details.  They scrutinize every pressure.  They have the authority to shut you down and use it regularly. 

Industry advances are no longer being vetted in peer reviews and conferences. Government regulators now vet the newest technology. You can find it all in AppIntel AI.  Using anything else is dangerous.

Trust matters. And most sources don’t deserve yours.

Super-reliable sources like textbooks and technical papers are always out of date, which doesn’t help much in a fast-moving industry.

Service company websites can be helpful, but keep in mind that they might only promote their own products and the data can be hit or miss when it comes to recency.

The sweet spot? Oil and gas info that’s both trustworthy and current (quadrant 1 in the trust-currency matrix). That is where AppIntel AI shines.

You need to trust sources. Relying on dodgy or outdated info can be downright dangerous and put people at risk. For example, using unverified data from open web platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, or CoPilot isn’t a safe bet for oil and gas intelligence. These are the kinds of sources you want to avoid.

AppIntel AI is built for oil & gas, not for everything. And that’s the point.

Government regulators now vet the newest technology.

The Problem Isn’t AI — It’s the Wrong AI

AppIntel AI can’t replace your engineer or your geologist.  But it can make them faster and more accurate.  AppIntel is much better for oil and gas than the frontier AI models like Gemini, ChatGPT or Claude.

I met an oil company that is trusting a frontier AI to interpret logs and give them a field depletion plan.  They believed it was better and cheaper than their geologist.  Yet there were no output curves in the AI log interpretation!  No LAS information input.  No average porosity calculated.  No bulk phi-h revealed.  How can you trust an AI for anything that omits these fundamental outputs!

It is dangerous to replace your talented, experienced staff with an AI like ChatGPT or Claude. These have no training in oil and gas.  Don’t trust them to advise you in decisions involving millions in capital and potential lives at risk.

And don’t replace your staff with AppIntel AI – use it to help them make better interpretation and evaluations.

AppIntel AI does not pretend to replace your talented staff.  Rather it enables them: faster, higher, stronger, together.

Granger Low  7 Jul 2026

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