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SC-07 | Mitigating Bias, Blindness, and Illusion in E&P Decision Making

Society of Petroleum Engineers

Saturday, 20 July Sunday, 21 July 2019, 8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.  |  Denver, Colorado

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Who Should Attend

Engineers, Geoscientists, Managers, Economists Learning Level: Introductory

Objectives

Participants will be able to:

  1. Recognize the various forms of bias, blindness, and illusion and understand how these manifests themselves in our daily work.
  2. Identify motivational bias (a conscious bias) and understand how this trigger unconscious biases in us.
  3. Quantify how bias, blindness, and illusion contribute to poor decisions in our projects via multiple examples and case studies.
  4. Understand how to reduce our reliance on intuition, instinct, and “rules-of-thumb” in our analyses and interpretive work.
  5. Apply key steps to lessen the impact of bias, blindness, and illusion in our recommendations, decisions, and look-backs.

Course Content

This course begins by examining the types of bias, blindness, and illusion that affect us. Exercises, videos, examples, and discussions help illustrate how these exert themselves in our daily activities. We then address their role in the oil and gas industry via case studies that show their impact on decision-making. This is followed by a half-day, real-world exercise using data from an appraisal/development project to give participants practice in addressing bias, blindness, and illusion in their technical work. The course concludes by presenting a summary ‘toolkit’ with mitigation techniques that immediately can be applied to project work.

Decisions in E&P ventures are affected by bias, blindness, and illusion which creep into our analyses and interpretations. This two-day course examines the influence of these distortions and presents techniques that can be used to mitigate their impact.

Why You Should Attend:

Bias refers to errors in thinking whereby interpretations and judgments are drawn in an illogical fashion.

Blindness is the condition where we fail to see an unexpected event in plain sight.

Illusion refers to misleading beliefs based on a false impression of reality.

All three can lead to poor decisions regarding which work to undertake, what issues to focus on, and whether to forge ahead or walk away from a project.

What Participants are saying in the course reviews:

"New concepts and materials--lightbulb moment!"
"Resonates through all of what we do."
"Powerful use of industry examples."
"Realistic exercises reinforce theory and concepts."
"These ‘new’ tools will be part of my everyday thought processes and interactions."

Fees

Members: $1400

Non-members: $1800

Students: $500

Limit: 40 People

CEU: 1.6

Includes:

  • Printed Course Material
  • 2-day course with lecture
  • Class exercises and discussion
  • Morning and afternoon refreshments and lunch

Venue

SC-07 | Mitigating Bias, Blindness, and Illusion in E&P Decision Making
Colorado Convention Center
700 14th St
Denver, Colorado 80202
United States

Instructor

Creties David Jenkins
Creties Jenkins Rose and Associates, USA