“We shouldn’t allow the momentary disturbances in the market to cloud our (long-term) view on the market,” Galitzine said, speaking during AISTech 2016’s annual Town Hall Forum panel discussion.

“We are truly in the middle of a revolution. Few are the people who could have predicted that the United States would double its oil production from 5 million barrels per day to 9.7 million (in eight years) as of May last year.

Galitzine said that, yes, there is pain in the oilfields now, but there has been pain before when new, production technologies came along.

“When we went from percussion drilling to rotary drilling, not all the companies made it. The ones that seized on it early enough are the names we know today,” he said. “The same thing is happening with the horizontal drilling.”