IRON MAIDEN Front Man Bruce Dickinson Takes on Big Oil

Bruce Dickinson is no stranger to re-invention and change both personally and professionally. Bruce has done so many different things personally it would be impossible to list them all here. A few among them are; Flying a Jumbo Jet, Starting numerous companies, Marketing Iron Maidens own beer and wine. Professionally he has invested in several socially conscious businesses and private equity groups; After leaving Iron Maiden for several years he came back and went through a re-invention again bringing IRON MAIDEN the esteemed title of "Biggest Metal Band in the World. All of this being done while the music industry went through an epochal change so dramatic that it bears no resemblance to itself just 10 years ago, heck even 5 years ago.

In many ways the Oil and Gas Sector is in the same position and in danger of becoming obsolete.

In an article from Energy Voice Bruce throws down the Gauntlet and Challenges North Sea Oil to reinvent itself

Mr Dickinson gives his take on the music industry changes over the last 15 years:

[from Energy Voice]
Ultimately, many record labels went out of business because they failed to adapt to the fact that fans were getting hold of music for free, Mr Dickinson said at the second Press and Journal Gold Awards.

Mr Dickinson, said record companies tried to “arrest their whole consumer base”.

“People did not want to be thieves − they were just enthusiastic about bands and could not believe their luck,” he said at the awards ceremony, run in association with the paper’s sister website Energy Voice and title sponsor Aberdeen Asset Management.

Not for the first time, oil and gas companies are staring down the barrel due to low crude prices.

For them, the challenge is to protect their talented workforce's while finding new ways of using their assets.

“It happened to the music industry 10 to 15 years ago,” Mr Dickinson told Energy Voice. “The oil industry is like the record industry. It needs to look at what it’s doing. It’s an energy supplier.

“When record labels got turned over by digital it did not mean people stopped wanting music. It just meant people did not want to pay for records any more.

“They still pay for music, only in different ways. They buy the t-shirt, the concert ticket, the merchandise, but the music itself they get pretty much for free.

“For the oil industry, people still need energy, but they will use it and get it in different ways. If the oil industry only concentrates on digging stuff out of the ground it will go the way of the dinosaurs.”

The singer said he though crude prices would remain low for many years to come, so companies had to think about diversifying their business activities.

“Helicopters are needed for many different things, but there are not enough of them around, so maybe people can redeploy their resources,” he said.

“You need to think outside the box. If you’ve got something as complex as a helicopter, but it’s not needed to take oil workers around, maybe it could be doing something else.

“What’s important is to maintain the skills base, that’s the main thing.”

He also said geopolitical factors were working in the renewables industry’s favour: “One of the big drivers of renewables is not people’s desire to be green, it’s the requirement to be independent of unstable states around the world that have a lot of oil under the ground.”

Thanks to Energy Voice writer Mark Lammey, for breaking this news and writing about it.


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Tags:  Iron Maiden, Bruce Dickinson, North Sea Oil  

Kenny Larson    September 10, 2016