And honestly, when you look at the antagonism oil and gas has had to deal with over this period, you can understand why they have been inclined to feel that way. They’ve been vilified by anti-frac’ing protestors. They’ve seen their compliance workloads escalate in the wake of heavier regulatory burdens. As an industry, they’ve been picked on by lawyers employing sue-and-settle tactics to make money, all under the guise of pushing endangered species listings. They’ve had their facilities surveilled with FLIR cameras and then been declared polluters – often groundlessly.

So they’ve hunkered down and decided, many of them, to stay out of the limelight. Why invite scrutiny, when you feel like you have a public out there that has it in for you?

The truth is that most of the public has no such hostility toward oil and gas. But aside from that, there are other reasons why it might be time to rethink this strategy that oil companies often have, of staying “under the radar.”

If that line of thinking ever served them in the past, the reasons to think otherwise are becoming more and more compelling. One flaw in the old ways of thinking is that those companies likely were misleading themselves in thinking they were achieving any kinds of safeguards. The truth is, no adversarial individual or agency was ever likely to begin any fault-finding with an oil or gas company by looking at that company’s website.

It was never a case of, “Oh, I see they have a website! I’ve got them now!” Not having a website is no real defense.

If an entity out there was ever going to make trouble for an oil and gas-related business, such trouble likely would start from finding some evidence of actual wrong-doing, and that sort of finding would be out in the field, not in a Google search. If an environmentalist, say, spotted an oil spill, he might then raise a hue-and-cry against the offender. But he wouldn’t be likely to start trouble against any business simply because that business maintains a site. If anything, a website would be that business’s first, best shot at making its true character known.

Truth be told, your peers are abandoning the “fly low” mantra. They are flocking to the digital revolution that has transformed the oilfield as a result of the convergence of two parallel phenomena: the “Great Crew Change” and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The “Great Crew Change” is a phenomenon that is revolutionizing the oilfield. As the industry’s older generation – Baby Boomers, most of them – keep retiring, the field is being left to the younger entrants. Millennials and Gen Z workers are filling the void, and these workers were raised on the internet.

The Internet of Things (IoT), meanwhile, is the web-based network of devices, sensors, and software that have been brought to play as the industry has revolutionized its technology base. The so-called Digital Oilfield is a manifestation of what the IoT is doing in O&G. Increasingly, devices and computers are interconnected in greater and greater breakthroughs of efficiency and optimization.

These changes have thrust the once-lagging industry into a digital dependence.

And if these reasons are not enough to convince O&G-related businesses to get with the times and get their websites launched or updated, there is the fact that O&G is in a hiring battle with all other industries for qualified help. And it is hard to attract good, tech-savvy help when one’s own company does not deal in 21st century tools.

For all of these reasons, there is a stampede going on, within oil and gas especially, to get websites established and get companies on the digital map with an established and active web presence.

And so, if you are one of those companies who have held onto the “under the radar” mentality, it might be time for you to ask yourself if you really want to be the outlier in that scenario. Do you want to wait another five years and be five years further behind the curve in terms of being found online and in terms of having any kind of name recognition or domain authority? Some of your peers are spending significant amounts of time and money to develop a presence on the web.

The question becomes, do you want to be around in five years?

Building a website is not a guarantee that you will still be in business in five years. However, not building a website does lay the odds in favor of the other guys who do.

It’s a good choice to invest in building your online presence and using your website as your hub. It is the starting place for the best possible program for jumping out ahead of the pack.

We want to be your partner. Let’s talk about how to get started.