THE INTELLIGENT BARREL LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME
Connect the capability to the barrel.
30 Sessions · 25 Minutes Per Day · Six Weeks · Free · For leaders in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector
Hello — I am Coach Ritchie. I am the AI assistant for this programme. Ritchie Wingo built me, and your work is marked against the rubric he published; anything that falls below the mark to continue, he reviews himself, because that is the point at which a person needs help rather than a score. I am here for the moments in between, when the steering committee meets on Monday and you want to argue a point through with someone first.
Thirty sessions, twenty-five minutes a day, six weeks. The argument of this programme fits in one sentence: artificial intelligence will not save Nigerian oil and gas; leadership using artificial intelligence will. The models are available to everyone. What is scarce is the discipline to build the data foundation first, prove value in bounded pilots, keep human judgement in the loop where the stakes are high, and scale only what pays — and that discipline is a leadership deliverable.
Every assignment is about your company and the one loss that costs it most, and every assignment comes back with a written letter: what holds up and why, and where something is thin, exactly where to look. By Session 30 you will hold a signed ninety-day game plan for your company.
Ask me anything as you work and I will help you think it through, but I will not write your plan for you, I do not give investment, legal or engineering advice, and I switch myself off while you sit a quiz or an exam.
There is nothing to buy and no licence key to redeem. You sign in with your Google account so that your work can be marked and returned to you, your progress page follows you between devices, and your certificate can be issued in your own name.
With your Google account. Name, email, the company you work for and your role — that is the whole enrolment.
Leadership using AI and the six frameworks. Name your company, its type and the one loss that costs it most.
Twenty-five minutes, then one written assignment. It is marked against a published rubric and comes back as a letter.
You assemble and sign your ninety-day plan, sit the final, and your certificate is issued.
Already started? Open my progress page → · Just looking? Read Week 1 →
This programme assumes you are not a data scientist and do not intend to become one. It ends with you able to connect any AI proposal to the barrel, the naira and the decision it changes — and to refuse to be impressed by anything that cannot.
Sense, decide, act, learn — and find the stage at which your own organisation’s loop breaks.
Data readiness around the decisions that matter most, because poor data now returns confident garbage.
Connectivity, edge, core and cloud, the data platform and MLOps — and the build, buy or partner decision.
Subsurface, digital twins, marginal-field economics, production optimisation and predictive operations.
Flaring and measurement-based methane reporting, and a downstream that no longer behaves as the old models assumed.
Governance across three lines of defence, loss prevention on the pipeline network, and autonomy earned rung by rung.
Credibility that investors can measure, and Local Content 2.0 — owning the intelligence layer.
The twelve pillars, the plan for your kind of company, and diagnose, design and launch with measured pilots.
| It is written for | It is not written for |
|---|---|
| Managing directors, executive and non-executive directors of upstream and marginal field operators, gas and downstream companies | Engineers looking for model-building or coding work — that is a different course |
| Leaders of EPC and construction, drilling and well services, marine and logistics, and fabrication businesses | Anyone looking for investment, legal or engineering advice on a specific asset |
| Heads of operations, production, maintenance, HSE, commercial, finance, technology and people who must make AI pay | Anyone wanting a certificate without writing about a real company |
| Regulators, financiers and advisers who must judge what an operator’s AI claims are worth | Anyone expecting twenty minutes of video and a pass |
This programme does not end in a folder of notes. In Session 1 you name your company, its type, and the one loss that costs it most, and every session after that writes one section of a single document — your 90-Day AI Survival Game Plan — around it. By Session 30 you assemble and sign it. Written properly, it is the paper you table at your next executive committee or board meeting.
| Week | Sections you write |
|---|---|
| Week 1 The Inflection: From Data to Barrels | 1. Section 1 — Our company, its type, the one loss that costs us most, and where our Operating-Intelligence Loop breaks. 2. Section 2 — The value at stake and our data-to-decision conversion gap. 3. Section 3 — Two candidate uses on the value chain, and the leadership priorities that apply. 4. Section 4 — How our operating model changes, function by function. 5. Section 5 — Our commercial value map, executive operating rhythm and board metrics with baselines. |
| Week 2 The Foundations You Cannot Skip | 6. Section 6 — Data readiness for our first decision. 7. Section 7 — Our signal-to-decision path and the pilot outline that tests it. 8. Section 8 — What our first use case requires of the engine. 9. Section 9 — Build, buy or partner, observability and the funding case for our engine. 10. Section 10 — Where expert judgement must be accelerated and never replaced in our business. |
| Week 3 Intelligence in the Field | 11. Section 11 — Our maturity stage and the credibility of the numbers we report. 12. Section 12 — Whether a living twin is warranted, what it must answer, and its pilot. 13. Section 13 — Our thin-margin discipline: the avoidable losses ranked by risk-adjusted impact. 14. Section 14 — Our binding constraint, the next one, and how AI would find them. 15. Section 15 — Where our reliability practice sits and the step up to predictive. |
| Week 4 Gas, the Downstream and Operational Trust | 16. Section 16 — Our gas, flaring or emissions-measurement position and the AI response. 17. Section 17 — How the downstream reset changes our business. 18. Section 18 — Our accountability map across the three lines of defence. 19. Section 19 — Our governance pilot, rhythm and scoreboard. 20. Section 20 — Our largest preventable loss and the fused-signal response. |
| Week 5 Controlled Autonomy, Capital and People | 21. Section 21 — Three uses placed on the autonomy ladder, with guardrails. 22. Section 22 — Our first bounded agentic pilot and the board's questions answered. 23. Section 23 — Our credibility flywheel and what investors or lenders can verify today. 24. Section 24 — The numbers we must defend, their owners, and our capital-credibility pilot. 25. Section 25 — The capability each role in our company needs. |
| Week 6 The Leadership Mandate | 26. Section 26 — Our capability pilot and scoreboard. 27. Section 27 — Our company scored on the twelve pillars, and the three that come first. 28. Section 28 — The game plan for our company type and the KPIs we will track. 29. Section 29 — Our ninety days: diagnose, design, launch, with owners and the stop-or-scale decision. 30. The assembled, signed 90-Day AI Survival Game Plan. |
This programme is free, and nothing is upsold to you inside it. When you finish, you receive an ERW CommandBarrel certificate of completion in your own name — issued on a pass, not on attendance.
| To receive it | What that means |
|---|---|
| Every assignment passed | Sessions 1 to 29, each marked at 70 or above against its published rubric. Work below the mark comes back with what to fix; resubmit and the new mark replaces the old one. |
| The capstone passed | Your signed 90-Day AI Survival Game Plan, Session 30, marked at 70 or above. |
| The Final Exam passed | Fifteen questions, three of them rebuilt from your own earlier mistakes, at 70 or above. |
The certificate is emailed to the Google address you signed in with. It certifies completion of an ERW leadership programme; it is not a professional licence, an engineering qualification or a university award.
Only people who have finished the programme can write one — the Session 30 capstone passed and the marked Final passed, both recorded by the server rather than by anyone’s say-so. They are shown exactly as written, never solicited and never edited.
One session a day, twenty-five minutes. Each one teaches part of the doctrine and makes you use it on your own company.
Every session ends in a written assignment — a diagnosis, a value case, a pilot design, a plan section. Four hundred to nine hundred words.
Against the rubric printed under the assignment. A written letter comes back, usually within minutes.
Session 30 assembles twenty-nine sections into one document, then the final exam — three of whose questions are rebuilt from your own mistakes.
No mystery, and no waiting days for a mark. Here is the whole loop.
One document per session — Word or Google Docs — with the first line reading Session: N. Your own company, your own numbers.
Against that session’s published rubric, criterion by criterion. The same rubric every time, for everybody.
Not a score — a letter naming what holds up, what is asserted without evidence, and exactly where to look to fix it.
Your mark joins your progress page and the corrected section goes into your plan, so Session 30 is assembly rather than writing.
An illustration of the letter format, using Session 3’s real rubric.
| Criterion | Awarded |
|---|---|
| Maps both candidates through all five links in the company's own terms | 24 / 30 |
| Applies all five priorities to each candidate, stating failures plainly | 19 / 30 |
| Chooses one to go first, tied to the Section 1 loss, with an owner by role | 20 / 25 |
| The honest paragraph names a priority the student's own company has skipped | 16 / 15 |
Six weeks. Five sessions a week, twenty-five minutes each, at whatever pace your diary allows. Every session ends in one written assignment about your own company, and every assignment becomes a section of your ninety-day plan.
Thirteen papers, marked the moment you submit, every question returned with the reasoning behind it. Six pop quizzes of five questions, six practice exams of fifteen, and a fifteen-question final. You are never left to guess when to sit one: the session that opens a paper says so, prints the paper beside its assignment, and flags itself on the session tab — and your progress page always names the paper due now. Closed book, no notes, and Coach Ritchie switches himself off while you sit one. Pass mark 70 — and you may resit the practice papers as often as you like.
5 questions · after Session 3
15 questions · after Session 5, closing Week 1
5 questions · after Session 8
15 questions · after Session 10, closing Week 2
5 questions · after Session 13
15 questions · after Session 15, closing Week 3
5 questions · after Session 18
15 questions · after Session 20, closing Week 4
5 questions · after Session 23
15 questions · after Session 25, closing Week 5
5 questions · after Session 28
15 questions · after Session 29, before the final
15 questions · in Session 30
Twenty-nine sections written one per session, assembled and signed in Session 30: the one loss that costs your company most, where its loop breaks, the data and engine it needs, the field uses that pay, the governance and autonomy it can carry, the capital and capability case, the twelve pillars scored, and your days 1–30, 31–60 and 61–90.
The Intelligent Barrel — An Operating Doctrine for AI in Nigerian Oil and Gas. A reader’s toolkit of six frameworks and seventeen chapters across six parts: the inflection; the foundations you cannot skip; intelligence in the field; trust, control and security; capital and people; and the leadership mandate. Its argument in one sentence: artificial intelligence will not save Nigerian oil and gas; leadership using artificial intelligence will.
These 30 sessions teach the doctrine and make you use it. The book carries what twenty-five minutes cannot: every chapter in full with its sources, the figures and scoreboards, the twelve-pillar game plan with the plan for each company type, the 90-Day Pilot Blueprint and the board-level metrics.
Nothing in this programme depends on buying it. Every session, paper and certificate is free whether you own the book or not.
The whole programme on one printable page — the six frameworks, the twelve pillars, the ninety-day roadmap, the pilot blueprint and the board’s metrics. Keep it beside you from Week 1.
The document every assignment is written in — opens in Word or Google Docs, with the first line already correct.
Read the first session before you sign in, and decide for yourself whether the rest is worth six weeks.
Your marks, your letters, your plan sections and your paper results, in one place.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Is it really free? | Yes. No card, no key, no paid tier. The certificate is free too. The book is available separately for anyone who wants the full chapters, figures and sources, and nothing in the programme depends on it. |
| How much time, honestly? | Twenty-five minutes of reading and thirty to sixty minutes of writing per session. Call it twelve to fifteen hours over six weeks, and rather more if you do the capstone properly. |
| Do I need a technical background? | No. The technical sessions teach you what to ask, not how to build. You need a real company, a real loss, and the willingness to look at both honestly. |
| Is this specific to oil and gas? | Yes. It is written for Nigeria’s oil and gas sector — operators, marginal fields, service companies, gas and the downstream. Every session sets a field case — the wellhead, plant, pipeline or yard — beside a boardroom case — the decision, the metric, the capital. |
| Is this investment or legal advice? | No. It is an operating doctrine for leaders. Figures and regulator facts are taught only as the book states and sources them. |
| Can my leadership team do it together? | Yes, and it works better that way — but each person signs in and submits their own work, because the plan is only useful if it is argued over. |
| What if I miss a week? | Nothing happens. There are no cohort dates and no deadlines. Your progress waits for you. |
| Who marks it? | It is marked against R. Wingo’s published rubric, criterion by criterion, the same way every time. Anything that comes out below the mark to continue, he reviews himself before it reaches you. Coach Ritchie helps you think; he does not mark and he does not write your plan. |