Strategic Inflection Points: Transforming Oil and Gas

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1 Landmark Services WHITE PAPER Strategic Inflection Points: Transforming Oil and Gas Solutions to maximize your assets.

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3 Landmark Services WHITE PAPER Strategic Inflection Points: Transforming Oil and Gas Author: Mark Lochmann, Global Portfolio Manager, Production Strategic Inflection Points represent what happens to a business when a major change takes place in its competitive environment. Strategic Inflection Point Business transforms - Andrew S. Grove, Former Chariman of the Board, Intel Coproration 10x change in element of the business Source: Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove Figure 1.Strategic Inflection Point Graph Business declines Today, oil and gas production has an opportunity to operate at significantly higher performance levels to fully exploit its assets. The application of the concepts of Digital or Intelligent Energy (D/IE), formally introduced to the oil and gas industry in 2003, now represents a Strategic Inflection Point for production, a new way of working that has the potential to transform the industry. Inflection point. It s that abrupt elbow in a graph of growth or decline when the new technology or paradigm truly kicks in, and suddenly there is no going back. From that moment, the new stuff takes off and the old stuff goes into rapid decline. - Robert X. Cringely, Journalist Broad industry initiatives referred to as Digital or Intelligent Energy solutions apply information technology to the oil and gas business with the intent to significantly improve and ultimately transform production operations through enhanced business productivity, margin improvement and increased corporate value. (1) Widely accepted tactical goals of these programs are on-target production and operational excellence. Case studies, data from Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and other sources (2-5) all indicate companies are moving towards adopting new ways of working, and provide ample evidence that these types of IE solutions are producing the expected results. 10X impact. The literature shows that operational performance can achieve gains in line with the criteria for a Strategic Inflection Point, i.e., a ten-fold change in a business element, as described by former Intel CEO Andrew Grove in his book Only the Paranoid Survive (6). 3

4 landmark services WHITE PAPER In fact, case studies from oil and gas have documented more than a tenfold improvement in performance, demonstrating that a new, more effective way of operating oil and gas assets is both possible and practical. For example, one operator has seen time devoted to low-value added activities surrounding review and analysis of electric submersible pumps decrease from 7 hours to 5 minutes, an 84 fold improvement. The company then re-purposed their newly available resources from this work process and others to deliver additional performance improvements (7). The implication of this dramatic improvement is that, in companies which respond to the Strategic Inflection Point, engineers and operators will no longer be required to devote the majority of their time to routine and low-value tasks. Instead they will be able to concentrate on applying their education and training on the kinds of activities that produce meaningful performance improvements and business value. If it s true that engineers spend 50% of their time manipulating data, eliminating this low-value activity could double engineering capacity. What would you do if your engineering staff doubled? What would you do if companies in your peer group doubled their engineering capabilities? The specific work processes that rise to the top of a company s priority list are different from company to company, and even from asset to asset. However, the underlying D/IE principles upon which the solution is based remain constant. Table 1 shows some of the opportunity targets that might be prioritized for different asset types. Challenge Opportunity Benefits Deep Water Mature Field Unconventional EOR/Steam Accelerate production Reduce operating costs Well/facility uptime Surface/subsurface integration Address data overload Artificial lift optimization Water flood optimization Reservoir performance Too few people, too many tasks Logistics Field planning Stimulation optimization Subsurface/surface integration Reduce operating costs Well failures Thermal optimization $70MM loss production opportunity 98% reduction in data related NPT 95% uptime at start-up Artificial Lift production increased by up to 2.5K BOE/d per well 80%+ reduction in low-value staff time 80% reduction of well shut-ins Reservoir to facilities visibility Reduction in downtime Optimized technical resources Optimization of steam costs Reduction in downtime Table 1. Challenges and Opportunities Change is underway. The evidence suggests that oil and gas production is poised at a Strategic Inflection Point. Over the last five or six years, more than 40 digital oilfield pilot projects leveraging similar concepts have been implemented successfully around the world. They encompass nearly every asset or basin type, and include hundreds of workflows, showing that D/IE solutions are not restricted to a single asset type or operating environment. All of the projects point to potential transformational performance gains. 4

5 Landmark Services WHITE PAPER Company Initiative More Information (all accessed 5/12/13) BP Field of the Future &contentId= Chevron i-field Kuwait Oil Shell Statoil KwIDF SmartFields Integrated Operations viewarticle/articleid/144/default.aspx unlocking-resources/smartfields.html Pages/io.aspx Table 2. Industry Digital Oilfield Initiatives Groves in his book also described a conversation about the future of Intel, in which he asked cofounder Gordon Moore what would happen if they both left and an outsider was installed to run the business. Both agreed that new management would make fundamental changes to both strategy and operations. In essence, they recognized that a Strategic Inflection Point had been reached, and that in order to grow and prosper, Intel must change. They decided to transform their business. A new way to work. Given the dramatic improvement in performance experienced by assets deploying D/IE solutions, it follows that, if an oil company s established leadership were replaced by an outsider not deeply influenced by production culture, he or she would quickly adopt proven D/IE methodologies. The transformed company would then feature automated work processes and complete visibility across the entire production value chain, minimizing or eliminating low-value and non-productive time. A reallocation of engineering and operational resources aligned with corporate goals and objectives provides the flexibility required to initiate and sustain transformation. Figure 2 shows the building blocks for enabling such a change. Building Blocks Integrated Operations Instrumentation & Infrastructure Integrated Information Cross-disciplinary Workflows Analytics Integrated Production Models Shared Visualization Collaboration Figure 2. Building Blocks of Digital/Intelligent Energy Solutions 5

6 landmark services WHITE PAPER D/IE Principles. Some of the principles that can be applied with D/IE approaches are: Management by exception. Focusing on events that deviate from an established standard. Management-by-exception practices are effective where it has been determined that only those events that deviate from a standard are significant. Business or operational intelligence. Business Intelligence transforms raw data into meaningful and useful information to enable more effective strategic, tactical, and operational insights and decision-making. Situational awareness. The ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical elements of information about how external and internal factors affect the current operating environment including the impact of various situations on goals, objectives, operating parameters and HSE. In a transformed company, employees would focus on such business imperatives as increasing production, reducing cost and managing risk, rather than on routine, mandatory, low-value assignments. The specific tasks undertaken such as optimization, would depend on a company s strategy, local conditions and operational priorities. Transformation. For oil and gas, Strategic Inflection Points can be hard to spot. Just as individuals vary in the way they progress through change, organizations too, move through processes in different ways according to their core cultural beliefs. For Grove at Intel, where technology and business cycles are on the order of a few years and competition is fierce, business analysis may be charged with highlighting changes relatively quickly. Even with these shorter cycles, Grove did not pick up the imminent change well before the inflection point, but rather right at the point or even a little after. This may have been due to the fact that it s not possible to confirm a 10X change until there are sufficient details to establish its real impact and value. Advanced process control. A systematic approach applying first-physics and data-driven models to an asset or system to significantly enhance operational performance. Model-based decision support. The use of computerized or automated first-physics and data-driven asset or system models to solve complex problems in support of operational and engineering decisions. Consequential analysis. An emerging business approach designed to generate information on the consequences of actions, decisions, options, or strategies on external environments. (-- The Future of Surveillance: A Survey of Proven Business Practices for Use in Oil and Gas, by M. Lochmann; SPE Paper No PA SPE Economics & Management, Volume 4, Number 4, October 2012, pp ) That oil and gas pilot projects appear to have proven the value of D/IE concepts may be a reliable indicator of a Strategic Inflection Point for E&P. In oil and gas, technology adoption cycles are much longer -- on the order of 15 to 20 years or more, according to industry literature and discussion (9). These longer cycles and a successful existing business can make it very difficult to identify and hence, to act upon, Strategic Inflection Points. However, if the Intel experience is a valid analogy, the timing for oil and gas to act may be ideal, given the longer technology adoption cycle times. Competitive advantage. Since the concept of Digital or Intelligent Energy was formally introduced to the oil and gas industry in 2003 with the release of Cambridge Energy Research Associates multi-client study on the digital oilfield, E&P companies have been piloting the concepts. 6

7 Landmark Services WHITE PAPER Significantly improved performance has been documented in a number of published papers and indicates we are at or near a Strategic Inflection Point. What s clear is that what has worked in the past is no longer sufficient to keep a company competitive with those who react quickly to the Strategic Inflection Point and embrace D/IE concepts. Figure 3 shows the relative competitive position of companies who continue with the status quo versus those that adopt D/IE operating principles. E & P Variation of Strategic Inflection Point Business transforms Competitive difference 10x change in element of the business Business declines slowly Figure 3. Slow Decline versus Business Transformation The consequences of ignoring a Strategic Inflection Point may be severe. Intel faced a catastrophe. E&P may not be in exactly the same situation. Rather than a precipitous decline, an E&P company that chooses to maintain the status quo could be on a much less severe decline. However, companies that choose to fully implement D/IE principles are likely to follow the predicted steep upward trend. The result would be a growing disparity among D/IE haves and have nots. Only prompt application of technology in support of operational transformation can put a company on the path to new levels of performance and ensure their competitive position Today oil and gas production has an opportunity to achieve these significantly higher levels of performance: Digital or Intelligent Energy solutions represent a Strategic Inflection Point for production. And the point is now. 7

8 landmark services WHITE PAPER References [1] Rubio, S.S. Lochmann, M., Halliburton; Denver, L., Rees, D., Knowledge Reservoir. Transformation and Change in Oil and Gas Production. SPE Paper No Presented at the SPE Intelligent Energy International, Utrecht, The Netherlands, March [2] Dutra, T., Machado, L., Rodriquez, M., Almeida, I., Montanha, B., Manzali., Dinis, M., Carbone, L., de Souza, F. and Herdeiro, M., Monitoring and Optimizing Oil Fields by a Real-Time Production Operation (RTPO) System. SPE paper presented at the SPE Latin American and Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference, 1-3 December 2010, Lima, Peru [3] Moisés, G. V., Rolim, T. A., Formigli, J. M., «GeDIg: Petrobras Corporate Program for Digital Integrated Field Management. SPE paper presented at the Intelligent Energy Conference and Exhibition, February 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherlands [4] Sankaran, S., Olise, M., Meinert, D., and Awasthi, A Realizing Value from Implementing i-field TM in Agbami A deepwater Greenfield in an Offshore Nigeria Development. SPE Economics and Management [5] Al-Jasmi, A., Nasr, H., and Goel, H. K., Kuwait Oil Company and Moricca, G., Carvajal, G.A., Dhar, J., Querales, M., Villamizar, M.A., Cullick, A.S., Rodriguez, J.A., Velasquez, G., Yong, Z., Bermudez, F., and Kain, J., Halliburton. ESP Smartflow that Integrates Quality and Control Data for Diagnostic and Optimization in Real Time. SPE Paper No presented at the SPE Digital Energy Conference and Exhibition, The Woodlands, Texas, USA, March [6] Grove, Andrew S. Only the Paranoid Survive : How to exploit the crisis points that challenge every company. New York: Currency Doubleday, Print. [7] Al-Jasmi, A., Goel, H.K., Al-Abbasi, A., and Nasr, H., Kuwait Oil Company, and Velasquez, G., Carvajal, G.A., Cullick, A.S., Rodriguez, J.A., and Scott, M., Halliburton. Maximizing the Value of Real-Time Operations for Diagnostic and Optimization at the Right Time. SPE Paper No presented at the SPE Digital Energy Conference and Exhibition, The Woodlands, Texas, USA, March [8] Lochmann, M., Halliburton. The Future of Surveillance--A Survey of Proven Business Practices for Use in Oil and Gas SPE Paper No PA SPE Economics & Management, Volume 4, Number 4, October 2012, pp (Originally presented at the SPE Intelligent Energy International, Utrecht, The Netherlands, March [9] SPE Forum Frontiers of Technology,

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