From Moscow to Mohkínstsis

“I was the first generation of students that graduated in the Soviet Union without having a job lined up for me,” says Svetlana Bidikhova. “When I started university, few people were familiar with CVs, job interviews, or the need to search for work.”

Svetlana grew up in a world that radically changed as she embarked on her professional career towards the end of spending eight years at univer­sity, as socialism ended and a market economy was introduced. But it was not the first big change that she was about to experience.

I was the first generation of students that graduated in the Soviet Union without having a job lined up for me…

In this interview, Svetlana tells the story of her fascinating career, which started in Moscow in the early 1990’s, taking us to the epicentre of the Cana­dian oil industry in Alberta and Cal­gary (Mohkínstsis), later. It is a story that is so human, characterised by the desire to build a future and the willing­ness to work hard for it.

Living minerals

“My parents gave me a book about minerals when I was a child,” Svetlana says at the start of our conversation. “But not an ordinary minerals book with a long series of factual descrip­tions of physical properties. Instead, the writer discussed the minerals as if they were living organisms with char­acters and the like.” This resonated with Svetlana, who had initially con­sidered studying psychology. “The brain is such an amazing thing,” she says, “and therefore the mineral char­acters captured my attention.”

The book created a link to a world that Svetlana was completely unaware of before: The world of geology.

But she also had a talent for nu­merical science, thanks to her father, who is a physicist. Rather than embark on a more theoretical study, though, she looked for something more applied and found out that geophysics was a perfect match. “I had never heard about it before, but the minerals book and my numerical skills made the per­fect combination.”

Svetlana joined the Oxford of the Soviet Union, the Lomonosov Mos­cow State University, following a series of challenging oral and written tests. “The great thing about the universi­ty,” says Svetlana, “was the diversity of our courses. It wasn’t just about math­ematical skills, we were also expected to master writing to almost the same extent. It shows how the curriculum was designed to not only make you a specialist, but also provide people with broader skills.”

And it was all for free.

“As the university attracted the most talented students from all over the Soviet Union, we had a very diverse group of people,” Svetlana says. “It was a real melting pot.”

English was not part of the curric­ulum. But as the world opened up in the mid-1990’s, Svetlana quickly cot­toned on to the fact that English would become an essential part of her future. She began seriously improving her English skills and used her extracurric­ular work as a technical and non-tech­nical interpreter for American busi­nessmen – who were flocking to the country for business, conferences, and new opportunities – as a way to further develop her language proficiency.

Then, as her eight years at the uni­versity came to an end, the moment arrived for Svetlana to start looking for work.

“When I started at university, all I knew was that a job would be cho­sen for me somewhere in the country,” Svetlana says. “Sure, you could file your preference if you wanted to stay in Moscow,” she adds, “but there were no guarantees as the locally-based po­sitions were always the most popular.” But now, as the entire political system was in upheaval, she was suddenly ex­pected to look for a position herself. “It was such a surreal situation for us,” she says. “But what do you do? You adjust and get on with it.”

Input output

This is the right moment to provide a sketch of the “geophysical landscape” in the Soviet Union during the mid- 1990’s. Despite the oil industry being an important part of the economy, ge­ophysical tools were mostly imported during that time. Names such as In­put Output, which ultimately became ION, were one of the few companies that had a foothold in the country.

“The company I ultimately joined after graduating,” says Svetlana, “was started by someone who had the vi­sion and mindset to start producing seismic recording equipment locally, which I think was a very clever idea. But in order to do that, we needed to explore the market and find the best suppliers.” It heralded a few years of travelling around the world to meet with potential manufacturers, and Svetlana was very much in her ele­ment. She also benefited greatly from the fact that she had learned to speak English during her university years.

But as Svetlana was working hard with her first employer, the chaot­ic economic and societal transition in the Soviet Union posed some real challenges. “We saw how the coun­try’s assets ended up in the hands of a small group of people, and how ordi­nary people’s savings evaporated over­night. It was a rude awakening that pushed us to start exploring different options.”

It is in that light that Svetlana and her husband decided to look for places to move to. As she had been in Cal­gary on business already, and Canada had opened its doors widely to foreign workers, they decided to apply for im­migration.

“The doors opened widely,” she says. “With both of us being highly educated and with a daugh­ter already, the process of get­ting approvals did not take long.” The young family moved to Calgary in 1999.

Barren land

But the move to Calgary did not mean that the subsequent job search was an easy one. “You are on barren ground, my stepmother said, alluding to the situation we found ourselves in,” says Svetlana. “My husband’s English was not good enough yet, so I was destined to be the breadwinner in the beginning” she says.

The oil and gas sector was very depressed in the 1990’s, which meant that Svetlana needed to look at other sectors to benefit from the experience and university degree she had gained.

She ended up in the usual trap of job adverts requiring experience work­ing in Canada, even at entry level. “It was the president of the engineering company Pure Technology who made the difference,” Svetlana explains. “He was willing to make a bet, even though they hired someone else at the same time, with the idea to test both employees independently. I was not aware of this at all, but at the end of the six-month period, I was the one who could stay,” Svetlana laughs.

Even though Pure Technology operated in the infrastructure sector, Svetlana learnt a lot of things that were instrumental during the rest of her career. For instance, the company was one of the first to trial fibre optic sensing to monitor the safety of large infrastructural projects, such as pipe­lines and bridges, long before fibre op­tics became a thing in oil and gas. “We had the same issues that we are expe­riencing today,” Svetlana says, “with data filtering and noise reduction be­ing the biggest challenges. But looking back, it is fascinating to see how much of an early adopter my company was at the time.”

Back to oil

When oil prices improved in the early 2000’s, the draw of the industry be­came more prominent and Svetlana landed a job with GX Technology, which was later acquired by Input Output, or ION Geophysical. “I started at the very bottom of the or­ganisation,” she says, “but I saw the growth opportunities in this industry and decided it was worth the leap, despite having to work myself up through the ranks first to even be at the same level again compared to the job I left behind.”

While Full Waveform Inversion is the buzzword today, it was depth migration at the time. “In geophysics, Svetlana explains, “technology always follows step-changes in computing power. In the early 2000’s, it was depth migration that could finally be done on a big scale. In some ways,” she says, “it paved the way for hori­zontal drilling, because with a much better handle on structure, it became possible to navigate the drill bit at a much higher precision.”

“It was a genuinely new thing, and some geophysicists were uncom­fortable with it,” Svetlana recalls. “A more senior colleague of mine at the time was asked to pick up the baton and drive our depth migration service forward, but he claimed that after a career of time migration, it was too late for him to learn something new. He knew that applying this technol­ogy would come with teething issues, and wasn’t willing to go through that phase again.”

Svetlana saw the opportunity and put her hand up. She subsequently became the driver behind the new service, even though she was very well aware that there would be instances where indeed you “learn from your mistakes. And these mistakes hap­pened, of course,” she laughs. “But that’s what life is all about, isn’t it?”

Expertise at Shell

As the Calgary oil boom continued, with major players also moving in, the next opportunity for Svetlana came along in a yet unconvention­al way. “I was at a friend’s wedding when someone from Shell Canada said that they were looking to recruit experienced hires,“ said Svetlana. “I already worked in the same building as Shell, and had for years consid­ered working for them, so this came at such a good moment,” she says.

Her years at Shell are not so much characterised by working on a single technology like she had done at GX Technology and ION Geophysical, but rather focused on advancing technology worldwide as part of a global team of experts. “The exper­tise I saw in this company was unri­valled,” Svetlana says, “with so many great people, especially in Rijswijk and Houston. This almost academ­ic part of the business, while closely tied to operations, was unique and made significant, if mostly quiet, contributions to the success of pro­ducing assets.”

As the first few years with Shell were characterised by growth and op­timism, the last few years, up to 2016, had a rather different feel. Operators started to withdraw from the Canadi­an oil patch as oil prices were taking a hit after 2014, and environmental pressures mounted on the production of oil from oil sands. “Our centre of land seismic expertise was gradually downsizing and moved to Houston,” Svetlana explains. “We were 75 peo­ple in my first years with the com­pany, but at the end there were only three left.”

“It was not only sad to see the de­mise of the Calgary group of land seis­mic expertise, but also how this entire group of highly technical professionals supporting assets was heavily reduced in size. We live in different times now,” Svetlana says, “and there seems to be less of an appetite for long-term investment in technology that might only bear fruit in the longer term.”

The challenges of being a business owner

Having gained such a wealth of experi­ence, Svetlana was ready to jump into the great unknown yet again, but now as a business owner. Together with a former colleague she had known for a long time, they established GeoVectra in 2016, offering services in seismic processing.

It came with challenges she had not faced before.

“Being a business owner exposed me to the dilemma between offering the best technical quality versus making a surplus at the end of the day,” says Svetlana. “In our profession, there is al­ways the call to be made between running a processing job for one or three months. And guess which one is more expensive but comes with better quality data?”

“Reflecting on those years,” she says, “I have too often found myself in this situation where you need to make that call, whilst my natural inclination is al­ways to go for the best technical solu­tion no matter the costs.”

It made Svetlana re-establish her career options and following a short but fascinating spell at DMT, work­ing with a team of highly skilled Ger­man specialists on a series of exciting projects, she joined the company where she is currently at in the role of Vice President Geophysics; Absolute Imag­ing. “An aspect I really like about this place is that there is a real vision,” Svet­lana says, “not only in terms of technol­ogy, but also when it comes to entering new markets.”

It’s happening in India

“One of the bold moves Absolute Im­aging made is setting up an office in India. It opened up a new world for us,” Svetlana says. “Where the Calgary market is very well established, India is a country where there is an incredible energy to drive things forward.”

The business dynamics are also very different from what she has seen in Canada. “Simply put,” Svetlana contin­ues, “there is a highly competitive envi­ronment thanks to the entrepreneurial spirit in the country and the number of people who have the talent to embark on new adventures. But even in this competitive environment, thanks to the rapid economic development the coun­try is experiencing, there are still oppor­tunities aplenty. It is fascinating to work in such an environment,” she says.

A proud Albertan

During the more than 25 years she has now spent in Canada, Svetlana has be­come a proud Albertian.

“The people in this country are amazing,” she tells me as we near the end of our conversation. “The drive to make things work and plough on de­spite challenging circumstances is ex­emplary. And let’s not forget that this is all supported by a very broad mix of people from many different walks of life and different backgrounds.”

Svetlana feels rooted in Canada and Calgary in particular. It is for that reason she is also an avid mentor, try­ing to help the next generation of in­dustry professionals through providing insights or just offering listening time.

“I feel that offering support to young professionals is badly needed at the moment,” Svetlana concludes, “also because these people start their careers in times so different from how I started more than 20 years ago. Back then, there was widespread support for the oil industry. That is not the case any more, and many people in Alberta who work in the industry feel a level of frustration with this, also because there are still so many opportunities that cannot be further explored at the moment.”

Svetlana Bidikhova has proven to be very good at adapting to changing circumstances. When she embarked on her studies in Moscow in the ear­ly 1990’s, she was unaware of a world where one needed to apply for a job. Jobs were made for you. When this system collapsed, she was amongst the first to turn that situation around in her favour. And when she emigrated to Calgary with her young family, she also managed to secure a rewarding job quickly, even though oil was at a low, embarking on a rewarding career in the industry soon after. We decid­ed to meet again in twenty years’ time to talk about what comes next. I am already looking forward to it, because I know it will be another great story.