Howard Duhon

Systems Engineering Manager GATE

Mr. Duhon is the systems engineering manager at GATE. He has served as Technical Director for Projects, Facilities, and Construction on the SPE Board of Directors. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Oil and Gas Facilities.

Business/economics

Book Summary and Commentary: The Price of Oil

In the Price of Oil, Roberto Aguilera and Marian Radetzki predict a dramatic increase in shale oil and other tight oil production from about 4 million BOPD today to as much as 40 million in 2035. This will have a limiting effect on oil price.

March 31, 2016 • Howard Duhon • Oil and Gas Facilities
Human resources

Influence: Talk to My Elephant

Influence is an important part of engineering. It is not enough to develop a brilliant design; you have to convince someone to build it. Intuition and reason are important factors in influence.

March 31, 2016 • Howard Duhon • Oil and Gas Facilities
Risk management

Why Business Advice Is Often Bad Advice

Whether using internal expertise or outside consultants, projects and initiatives can go awry due to cultural issues and bad management advice. This can have implications for many aspects of a business, including process safety.

January 28, 2016 • Howard Duhon • Oil and Gas Facilities
Risk management

A "Normal" Accident -- The Loss of the RAF Nimrod XV230: A Failure of Leadership, Culture, and Priorities

Analyzing accidents can demonstrate how much they have in common with everyday operations. Business principles and sound engineering practices can be at odds.

January 27, 2016 • Howard Duhon • Oil and Gas Facilities
Business/economics

Hedgehogs vs. Foxes: Improving the Accuracy of Predictions

Can aggregative contingent estimation (ACE) improve the quality of oil price forecasts and even project performance? I have come to believe that oil price can be determined with reasonable confidence, and the key to such forecasting is ACE.

November 30, 2015 • Howard Duhon • Oil and Gas Facilities
Risk management

Action Science: Moving Away From Defensiveness and Silo Behavior in Our Work

A subject field perhaps little known in the oil and gas industry is action science, a strategy for increasing the skills and confidence of individuals in groups to create organizations and to foster long-term individual and group effectiveness.

November 29, 2015 • Howard Duhon • Oil and Gas Facilities
Business/economics

Oil at USD 20 per Barrel: Can It Be?

The oil price cannot be USD 20 for any long period because we cannot produce enough oil to feed the world at that price. But if the price of oil is based on supply and demand, how could it fall to USD 20 at any point in time?

September 30, 2015 • Howard Duhon • Oil and Gas Facilities
Simplification: A Moral Imperative

The author muses on oil supply and demand and complexity in projects.

July 31, 2015 • Howard Duhon • Oil and Gas Facilities
Management

Standardization vs. Innovation vs. Optimization: Buying or Building Your Dream Car

Given the inherent differences in projects, the author discusses how can standardization be used to avoid creating each one from scratch, and what the benefits of standardizing might be for the industry.

May 31, 2015 • Howard Duhon • Oil and Gas Facilities
Field/project development

Composite Results of the Project Complexity Study

PFC Technical Director Howard Duhon asked readers about the drivers of project complexity. Here are the results.

March 30, 2015 • Howard Duhon • Oil and Gas Facilities

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