Achieving success as a supply chain professional requires bringing "a very different skillset and orientation to your team," according to Adrian Bregnard, manager of contracts and procurement for Shell Projects and Technology.
Bregnard cited recent challenges facing the oil and gas industry, particularly at Shell's companies based in Europe.
"We're seeing more and more pressure on our companies in things around climate change and greenhouse gas emissions," Bregnard said in a presentation discussing procurement and effective supply management at the Oil and Gas Supply Chain Conference held recently in Houston. "Some protestors barricaded themselves in front of the Shell headquarters in London. They had all sorts of interesting signs and slogans demanding how Shell should show up. This is Shell -- we view ourselves as very aggressive in the oil and gas industry when it comes to things like the Paris Climate Change Accord."
Bregnard said that, as a supply chain professional, he has dealt with more ethics, compliance and human rights issues "in the past year than I have, probably, in the past 20 years. For me and my team, that is increasingly becoming a bigger part of our job."
Bregnard noted that the industry's response to climate change is an especially prevalent topic at his speaking engagements on college campuses and universities in the U.S.
"This new generation coming up is very, very attuned to this," he said.
Another challenge, Bregnard said, centers around productivity "on the front lines" of maintenance, wells and major projects.
"We as an industry still have a long way to go when it comes to things like productivity, efficiency and how well we're doing things in the field," he said. "We've stripped an enormous amount of cost out of our supply chain in the past few years because of the downturn, but on those measures, the oil and gas industry really lags when it comes to things like construction productivity, efficiency and time on tools."
Some regions of the Permian Basin are experiencing "enormous strides" in this area. "But we need to branch that out across the rest of our supply chains," he added.
A third challenge, Bregnard also observed, is that there is "a lot of pressure from capital markets and how investors view us as a good investment case."
It is clear, he said, that oil and gas stocks are performing relative to the rest of the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones.
Becoming a 'force for good'
The way the oil and gas industry is working through supply chains is also undergoing a massive shift, Bregnard said.
"We're finally starting to see a culture change in that newer generation coming in and the type of workforce, careers and jobs they expect to see," he said. "For me, personally, I've never seen so much change, risk and transformation in the supply chain as I've seen in the past year.
"There's a lot of risk and a lot of challenges in our industry. But I fundamentally believe that in our organizations and as supply chain professionals, we can really be a force for good. We can be a multiplier in terms of how we start to mitigate and overcome these challenges."
One of the most essential components oil and gas professionals must have is effective supply chain management or "effective supplier management and how to deal with these challenges," he said.
"If we deal with this alone, individually, we're not going to be successful," Bregnard concluded. "Dealing with it collectively through our supply chain [to be] effective together is how we're going to overcome some of these challenges."
