“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed people can change the world.” These frequently quoted words by fictional character US President Josiah Bartlet are an apt executive summary of our founder Kahina Abdeli-Galinier’s vision for SLB End-to-end Emissions Solutions (SEES). SEES was a business idea she first pitched in late 2020 to her then-boss—and to SLB CEO Olivier Le Peuch. Three and a half years on, SEES has gone from idea to serious business. It now has 45 highly motivated and dedicated employees, several industry-first technologies, and one big goal: zero methane emission from the oil and gas industry by 2030.

As I take over from Kahina to lead SEES into its next exciting phase, I sat down with her to get the inside scoop on the early days and how we got to where we are today.

It started with a white space. Preparing her strategy for SLB’s newly formed Digital & Integration division, Kahina was looking for new areas to expand into. “I thought to myself, we’ve built an incredibly powerful digital ecosystem here. One that can handle and connect the type of complex data we get in energy: data from physics, chemistry, economics. We’ve laid the foundations for a much more efficient, lower-carbon industry. What else can we do?” What she hit on was emissions management.

“Emissions data was the one type of oil and gas operational data we’d not really looked at. But even back in mid-2020, you could see how there would be an increasingly urgent, growing need for handling and making sense of emissions data. It was an area I felt we could really help accelerate with the technology we had. Ultimately, to help the industry slash its own, significant direct emissions.”

Kahina secretly added the idea to her strategy presentation in October 2020, with a pitch for funding. She left the meeting unsure whether it had landed, until a few months later. She got the call: “Olivier wants you to build a business case around your emissions management idea.”

Enter the villain: Methane

Then it all happened very quickly. Kahina explains: “I activated my network. I interviewed nearly 100 customers and industry contacts around the world to get an unbiased reading of the landscape. What emerged very quickly was that the need was for an end-to-end offering, not just somewhere to store data. The other word I kept hearing was ‘methane’.”

That’s when Kahina brought Drew (Pomerantz) on board. With his PhD in chemistry and dozens of patents to his name, Drew had been researching methane emission detection and measurement technology at the Schlumberger-Doll Research Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“It was in conversation with Drew that the opportunity to make a real difference crystallized for me,” Kahina continues. “Methane was a huge problem. A significantly more potent climate pollutant than CO2, eliminating avoidable anthropogenic methane emissions is a must-win battle in the fight against global heating. But a significant part of those addressable methane emissions are direct emissions from the oil and gas industry. They are almost entirely fixable with technology available today. And we were in a unique position to accelerate the fixing.”

Staffan (Erikson) joined the team shortly after, as digital lead, and the three of them worked on their business case. Kahina continued her customer research, Drew conducted a deep dive into all the measurement and abatement technologies available (at SLB or in the wider market) and Staffan looked at what already existed from a digital perspective.

Thinking bigger

What they found would push their idea far beyond a mere extension of SLB’s digital capabilities. Every part of the methane emission problem—from strategy and planning, detection and measurement to robust reporting and abatement—needed elevating and joining up in order to scale. There was a whole new business to be built here. And it had to be built because the need for a solution, for progress, was palpable.

Kahina continues: “The more we dove into the methane issue in oil and gas, the greater the chasm became between the huge opportunity to slow global heating this decade and the ecosystem available to make it happen. There was some great tech, but it wasn’t scalable, there was some willingness from operators to do something about their methane emissions, but they didn’t know where to start. We really had to tackle it all.”

And that’s what the team presented in July 2021, when they shared their business plan with the SLB leadership team.

Kahina: “We got the greenlight and then we were off. Our ‘hunch’ was proven right very quickly. Yes, there was a market for better methane measurement tech that we could help develop faster, and there was a real need to start monitoring and measuring with action in mind. But the big gap was in helping operators figure out where to start.”

A methane compass for operators

By September 2021, the team landed its first major consultancy project—a sprint to make sense of an operator’s methane pathway.

The idea of being a compass for the industry didn’t stop there. Drew and a growing technical and scientific team went on to systematically screen more than 100 methane measurement technologies, with the aim of putting together a definitive line-up of methane tech for different facilities and scenarios.

The strategy was two-pronged:

1. Select, invest in, and partner with companies that had really strong technology
2. Invest in the development of our own technology where there were gaps in the available line-up

Kahina explains: “Very early on, we understood that continuous monitoring was the missing link. To us, it was the only way to scale not just methane reporting but detection and measurement for serious mitigation. We want operators to be positively paranoid about every single leak. To enable that, you have to keep a constant eye out. To this day, methane surveys are done in periodic campaigns. Leaks that occur between surveys can go unnoticed for months. Major new legislation, particularly in the US, means that 2024 could be the breakthrough year for continuous monitoring. We’ve certainly started to see momentum picking up.”

Going faster: Innovation at speed

First, back to early 2022. Following the screening exercise and having identified a gap in the technology available, the team decided to develop its own point sensor to complement the lidar imaging technology from QLM that it had already invested in. The prototype for what is now the SLB methane point instrument was built in less than nine months.

From the outset, the development was geared toward scale. How could the team make the best methane monitor from component parts that would be available in the tens of thousands, thereby making rapid deployment at scale affordable for operators balancing compliance goals and reduction targets with the cost of monitoring?

Kahina elaborates: “This is where being a start-up within a giant like SLB really kicked in. We were in a position to develop our technology as a mass product. And at the same time, we could use the business’s deep practical knowledge of our customers’ operations to build solutions that work in the real world.”

While work was underway on a prototype, big consulting projects and on the industry’s first methane digital platform, the business got its name. The somewhat clunky “SLB End-to-end Emissions Solutions” became SEES. In March 2022, exactly nine months after its inception, it was officially launched to the world.

“It was the 8th of March!” Kahina quickly points out: “International Women’s Day. It was particularly poignant for me as a female entrepreneur, who somehow managed to have three babies that year: SEES, our first point sensor prototype, and, in September, my son.”

What’s happened since that momentous year? Another big launch, for a start. Kahina: “We shrunk our first-generation point instrument to the size of a large water bottle. This one’s not a baby. It self-installs and is completely self-sufficient in the field from day one. It looks like an Apple product. We’ve come a long way in two years. We’ve built a real business, we’ve got a fantastic, passionate team, we’re making a difference. And we have somehow managed to maintain a start-up spirit to this day and continue to move forward with purpose.”

So what’s next? With six years left, how close does Kahina think we are to fulfilling our current mission: zero methane by 2030?

Kahina: “If I’ve learnt anything in the last few years, it’s to believe in the unstoppable power of possible. As part of SLB, we’re in a unique position. We have access to answers and ways forward. It’s a huge privilege, but with it comes a duty to bring about the change only few can bring about. Zero methane by 2030 is possible if we take measurement seriously. Excellence in measurement is what SLB was founded on. Wouldn’t it be beautiful if 100 years on it unlocks a new era for our industry?”

What a time to take the baton from Kahina—and what footsteps to follow in. I take over as Business Line Manager of SEES at an exciting point in our journey. We know what’s possible and we have shown how fast we can move. But we also know the challenges operators face in navigating new regulations and new technologies. If, as Kahina predicts, the rubber is about to hit the road for methane action in our industry, then we’re right here. To support, advise, test, analyze. To make it happen. With the power of possible.