Gail, you hit the nail on the head. there is a technical paper on adoption of new technologies for O & Gas sector. The article is titled:
"Do Nothing": Technology's
Toughest Competitor in the Upstream Oil and Gas
Industry" by Ali Daneshy

Basically there is the old boys club (procrastinators), then there is the new highly educated Eng. who wants to make a name of himself, (early adopters)

Dr Daneshy was the director of the Society of Petroleum Eng.

I have been involved(minor) with introducing new tech to the oil fields, especially the Canadian Tar sands. The process steps are:

1 enquire about it at tech shows/ seminars and produce a SPE paper.
2 at meetings discuss all other competitors
3 possible referral or phone enquiry directly to new tech company
4 arrange for bench testing in one or two quarters
5 additional bench test but also including evaluations for on site mock-up test
6 prepare for on site test with customer.
7 on site field test.

time span= 18 months, then if all goes well a larger scaled size test. It usually takes a new company 5yrs or so to have a fully commissioned full sized product running. But then the customer now evaluates the long term operational expenses, Capex vs Opex. If all goes well its a sale, if a top oil producer agrees, they all line up. The second path is to do all the above mentioned but with an oil service company such as SLB/ Weatherford/ Hal etc., but the object of this game is to build up the reputation of the new company name. If you are going global, expect 10 to 14yrs before sector wide acceptance. This is the short form. Its not easy breaking into the oil & Gas industry plain and simple.
Regards Oilcan