Sometimes it makes you wonder why we can't all just get along. Service companies and consultants are taking tentative steps in that direction.
Throughout my years at Hart, I periodically have examined the relationships between oil company and service company personnel, a delightful hodgepodge of possibilities that runs the gamut from good friends to hateful opponents.
But another cog in that wheel was introduced to me this spring when I attended a conference put on by a service company (Baker Atlas) for petrophysical consultants. The goal was to keep the consultants up to date on Baker's formation evaluation offerings. Of course, they cleverly invited the trade press with the hope that we might understand what they were up to as well. (I'm still a little uncertain about this whole 3DEX concept, but I enjoyed the golf tournament.)
In an interesting maneuver, the seminar included two presentations from the consultants themselves. Matt Bratovich from DeGolyer and MacNaughton presented the major consulting company's perspective, while Bill Howard of ResTech represented a consultant's and contractor's viewpoint. The good news is that the conference and the invitation to speak were considered steps in the right direction. The bad news is that there's plenty of work to be done before the consultants feel like they're part of the team.
The relationship between service companies and consultants is an interesting dynamic. In some ways they're competitors because they're serving the same client base. But in other ways they act as a valuable referral service for each other. Consultants often are brought in to lend their particular expertise to a project, meaning a petrophysical consultant may know better than anyone at the client company which service company is likely to have the best logging and interpretation suite for the job at hand. Service companies, meanwhile, are taking a more active role in project management as well and may be in a position to recommend a consultant with a certain expertise that neither the service company nor the client possess in-house.
Bratovich, vice president of the Dallas, Texas-based consulting group, said his company includes eight full-time petrophysicists who do formation evaluation as part of multidisciplinary projects. Bratovich pulled no punches in his presentation.
"I have a hard time talking about 'working relationships' between consultants and service companies," he said. "We have contacts, not the interaction that an oil company might have."
The term "consultant," he said, covers a range of companies and individuals whose types of services dictate how they might like or need to interact with service companies.
He listed several issues that affect consultants. First of all, most consultants have no control over the datasets they're given to analyze. They often take no part in planning the data acquisition and are forced to work with whatever they are given.
Also, they have a limited amount of time to evaluate the information, and they have limited access to any kind of research staff if they need technical support. Finally, staying current with advances in technology and interpretive methods is tough, despite seminars like the one Baker Atlas sponsored.
How can the service companies help? Returning phone calls would be a good start. "If your largest client calls you and you're in the middle of something else, you're going to take that call," Bratovich said. "Consultants are not your highest priority. But we can't wait a week and a half to get our phone calls returned. Setting up a method to ensure prompt response when a consultant seeks advice on a technical issue would be a great first step in improving our relationship."
Consultants also are increasingly reliant on service companies to be their source on new technology developments. "If you can share that information with the operators, you can share it with the consultants," he said.
Finally, he said, it would be helpful to know in which geographic regions new services are available so the consultants can recommend a tool that might actually be available on that continent.
Howard's talk was titled "Consulting: What the hell were we thinking?" and outlined the difficulties of making a living as a consultant. The myths, he said, include the anticipation of prestige, money, a flexible work schedule and the ability to make a difference. The reality is that the consultant is considered the low man on the totem pole who is constantly worried about where the next job will come from. He or she is married to the clock and rarely takes a vacation. But it still can be a rewarding job, he said.
Howard outlined several different types of consultants, everything from a contract worker to a large company like DeGolyer and MacNaughton. Regardless of their size, he said, the best consultants understand the operators' team approach and can couple that with a service company's sense of urgency.
His suggestions for the service companies were fairly simple: don't ignore us; don't try to bypass us or make us look bad; don't take an adversarial position toward us; keep us abreast of new technology; and refer us when appropriate. Finally, he said, the client may have hired the consultant to keep an eye on the service company.
An audience member seconded this notion. "I asked a client one time why he was willing to pay me while the service company would do the same consulting work for free," he said. "The client said, 'We want the truth.'"
Operators often view consultants as independent experts who won't whitewash a recommendation, Bratovich added, and their opinions can have an impact on an operator's willingness to hire one service company over another.
Maybe I get more caught up in the "soft" issues of the industry than I should, but this is good stuff. The petrophysical expertise sitting in that room that day was formidable, and it would be a shame to think petty jealousies between consultants and service companies would prevent that expertise from being adequately applied to the constant stream of pesky formation evaluation problems plaguing the industry. I'd like to see this kind of communication expanded in the industry and used to tackle problems wherever they might exist.

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