Thanks for the comment! You're right, oil and data aren't very similar.

In this context the metaphor is being used to compare the oil industry to our data product infrastructure. Both suffer from a lack of sustainability. APIs and similar services are often build for short term needs.

As our digital economy has grown, we're now beholden to a legacy of data products built at different stages of maturity and with insufficient user insights. In complex spaces (such as the energy industry I operate within), it's become very difficult to innovate with software because everything functions inside a spider's web of data products that won't play ball.