A new economic reality: today’s focus
Until recently, investors were focused on growing their E&P investments as rapidly as possible. Investment capital was readily available as long as it led to more land under lease, more rigs drilling, and more oil produced.
That is no longer the environment in which we operate.
E&P operators are now evaluated not by how quickly they can grow their operations, but instead on how efficiently they use their capital to drive profitability. It doesn’t matter whether an operator can produce a lot of oil quickly; what matters is whether oil can be produced in a way that returns profits to investors.
One of the best measures of the new economic environment is Return on Capital Employed: ROCE. ROCE measures both profitability and how efficiently an operator uses its capital, because it’s calculated by dividing a company’s EBIT by capital employed.
Operators have multiple options to improve their ROCE ratio. They include a focus on cost-cutting measures, suspending or selling underperforming operations and projects, and a razor-sharp focus on internal efficiency, productivity, costs, and project management.
Well delivery scheduling software that drives high ROCE
Since 2003, Actenum has led the way in developing Oil & Gas scheduling software that drives high ROCE by increasing operational efficiency, reducing non-productive time, and improving project team collaboration. Using the latest technology advances for intelligent scheduling, our software ensures that the right resources are in the right place at the right time, enabling operators to do more with less, and to increase capital efficiency through the effective use of resources.
Actenum software drives improved ROCE with multiple features that enable operations efficiencies:
- AI-driven schedule optimization: Actenum’s DSO scheduling and optimization software tames the complexity of integrated scheduling with powerful decision support technology and advanced analytics that rapidly identifies optimal schedules to meet business goals. It enables any type of resource to be scheduled against any type of activity, subject to any type of constraint, and it rapidly aligns the sequence of resources and activities with key objectives. As a result, it simplifies scheduling and eliminates guesswork to significantly improve the efficient use of equipment, personnel, and other resources.
- “What-If?” Scenario evaluation: Using Actenum software, operators always know what to do in any situation. It enables multiple “What if?” scheduling scenarios to be rapidly created and analyzed to show how decisions will impact costs, production, equipment use, and financial goals. It’s easy to create scenarios that answer questions such as “How productive will we be if we reduce spending by 25% this year?” Key Performance Indicators may be monitored as a schedule is updated, providing instant insight into how well asset ROI is being maximized, risk reduced, and predictable and reliable production being achieved.
This view is showing us the ability to compare scenarios and see both visual and key metric comparisons across the two scenarios. The color coding of milestones (IDL, SP, FP, etc.) in the Activity boxes also helps us decide whether we have moved activities too close to today, making our plan riskier. While the color coding tells us how likely we are to be successful in our plan, the metrics along the bottom ultimately tell us whether we will have a better high-level cash flow answer for the given pricing assumptions. The combination of the two attributes help us decide between various operational scenarios very quickly.
- All information in one place, available to everyone: With Actenum software, everyone in the organization benefits from a complete, single-source view of well delivery operations. It transforms what used to be a laborious manual task into a strategic advantage. Operations team members can share, view, and report on consistent, up-to-date schedules at all times. This enables operators to efficiently meet production targets, rapidly align spend with budgets, and accurately forecast materials in less time.
- Collaboration: Actenum provides software for every team member and incorporates comprehensive schedule visualization and reporting capabilities—including GIS mapping—so that any authorized user can view an optimized schedule tailored to their job function. Accessible from a desktop, tablet, or smartphone, Actenum’s collaboration software significantly improves efficiency, and mobility, providing up-to-the-minute schedule information anywhere, any time.
- Resource contracts and Blackouts: Blackout periods may be automatically imposed on Activities, Resources, Pads and individual Wells, preventing or slowing down activities during the period. Different types of Blackout periods (such as hunting season, weather, and maintenance) can be employed. Reports can easily be generated showing how these Blackouts influence the schedule.
- Lease Obligations: Actenum software captures lease terms and obligations, ensuring that any schedule adheres to lease constraints and obligations.
- Well interference and shut-ins: Actenum software provides capabilities for detecting and alerting users for Offset Well issues. As well, automatic resolution of violations is provided by the optimization engine.
- Material Utilization: Actenum software can compute and display material utilization and forecast, based on the schedule, material needs, by period. This enables users to forecast consumables and provide that information to the supply chain organization for optimized purchasing.
- Flow Network Management: Actenum software maps flow networks, including capacity constraints. This enable users to identify when wells need to be strategically choked. As well, it provides the ability to confirm that infrastructure issues are always taken into account, so wells can flow production to prevent delayed POPs, yielding accurate production forecasts.
Actenum software: the benefits
Does Actenum really provide a software solution that can improve ROCE in your organization? Yes! Some of the benefits our customers are experiencing are:
$1.4M savings through reduction of schedule conflicts
A US operator was experiencing schedule conflicts because their pre-spud, drilling, and completion schedules were separate and could not be easily integrated. This was causing permits to be obtained at the wrong time, construction and completions to be out of synch with drilling, and major difficulties with long-range planning.
For a single schedule change involving an 8 well pad, the operator estimated that up to $450,000 in equipment, process, and labor costs ensued. Given the frequency of conflicts (at least 4 per year), the total unnecessary expenditure was $1.8 million. Using Actenum software the operator was able to reduce the number of schedule conflict situations to 1 per year, saving $1.4 million.
$1.5 M savings by optimizing people’s time
The VP Operations at an IOC called us to say that his organization had saved an estimated $1.5 million in the first 3 months of using Actenum software. Formerly his team used MS-Excel to schedule drilling operations, and this required a daily meeting of up to 3 hours with 20 people attending. He referred to it as “the 3-hour argument”. After a very short time using Actenum the meeting evolved to a 4 person 15-minute daily session. The schedule was viewable by all attendees, the impact of changes was immediately visible, and questions about moving wells resolved rapidly.
2-day Cycle Time Reduction
A global operator was able to reduce their cycle time (spud to first oil) for a 160 well drilling project by an average of 2 days, by using Actenum. Activity gaps in the schedule could not be traced using their old scheduling approach but were immediately evident in Actenum’s pad-based Gantt chart schedule view. Also, the operator was able not only to configure various reports that showed process inefficiencies but also ensure that this information was available to all stakeholders when needed.
Rapid operational reconfiguration through decision scenario evaluation
Actenum software’s scenario creation and evaluation capabilities are being used by a leading US operator to rapidly analyze multiple versions of a drilling and completion schedule, to determine the appropriate course of action to maximize project value. Unlike many other operators, the drilling project schedule is frozen for a 6-week period, and this enables them to rapidly reconfigure their approach to the project in response to operational and market conditions. In one situation the customer used an Actenum scenario to determine the impact of a decision to spend an additional $12 million in one area of an asset. They forecast a $45 million return within 60 days, and this proved to be the case in reality.
Time and manpower reduction through more effective production forecasting
A leading US operator reduced the time and manpower requirements for processing multiple production forecasts from 2 weeks with 5 engineers to 1 day with 2 engineers. The operator's requirement is to evaluate up to 5 different test case schedules using monthly production forecasts and select the optimal for budgeting purposes. Each scenario is created using Actenum software, and the impact of each scenario on the total production forecast evaluated.
Summary
Leveraging Actenum’s sophisticated optimization technology enables operators to overcome the limitations of traditional manual scheduling and optimize their capital investments. Instead of a process where important decisions are made about how to manage a well delivery schedule with little concrete insight into outcomes, operators equipped with Actenum benefit from a much more agile schedule process that provides reliable input into decision-making at all levels of the organization. By ensuring that well delivery operations are always aligned with business objectives, Actenum software provides substantial economic benefits, maximizes asset ROI, and reduces risk.
For more information
To speak to an Actenum representative, or to schedule a demonstration, please contact us at info@actenum.com.
Ready to see the software in action? Watch this brief demo video.