Responding To A Changing Environment

by Philip Williamson

CEO, Capital DK

Background

As Malaysia’s first independent Oil & Gas (O&G) Exploration and Production Company, Customer ‘H’ was incorporated in 2007. Their focus is on the development of small to medium sized oil and gas fields in the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Oceania, regions.

Oil & Gas Companies operate within big budgets, and are able to man their offshore assets with replicated teams of highly skilled and expensive engineers. These highly skilled engineers ensure the task of reaching hydrocarbon targets is delivered on time, on budget, and with no additional risks to manpower health and safety, whilst minimizing the effect of operations on the environment. Industry reports recognise that approximately 63% of all projects experience budget overruns, through the high cost of cross-drilling, the cost burden of non-productive time (NPT), and with the end of the era of ‘easy oil’ which heralded the challenge to drill deepwater wells in excess of 12’000 feet, in even more hazardous conditions. Globally, the National Oil Companies and Oil Majors have struggled to backfill the skills gap left by an ageing workforce, and the knock-on effect is that it has become necessary to reduce the number of onsite, onshore and offshore resources, in favour of a centrally located remote-accessing team of senior experts.

The profile of this O&G Co was that they needed to operate within the same boundaries and key drivers as the traditional O&G Companies, but that is where the similarities end. Niche exploration companies exist and operate with significantly lower budgets; they are driven by the strategy to only participate in Low to Medium Risk ventures, while always maintaining a lean and efficient organisation. A single stuck pipe, cross-drilling requirement, or ongoing NPT situation could effectively wipe out the budget for drilling a well, and jeopardize the viability of the Company.

Best Practice Model

Capital DK were engaged by Customer ‘H’ in June 2012, and as a result of an in depth 90 day O&G IT Consultation with our mud logging, wireline, and petrophysics experts, we were tasked to help them develop a “best practice” model, deliver a secure software solution that could connect seamlessly to a myriad of data sources and vendors, that empowered Customer ‘H’ to achieve their goals of maintaining a lean and efficient team of highly skilled senior Engineers, to manage and monitor global Exploration operations from their head Office in Kuala Lumpur through the creation of a custom-built Real Time Operations Center (RTOC), and to shorten the time planned to reach their hydrocarbon targets. Any solution would need to be WITSML, PRODML and RESQML compliant, contain dynamic workflows and have the potential to add additional modules in the future, e.g. Production & Production Optimization, Project and JV Accounting, and Field Service.

The solution was Black Sun®, our next generation multi-modular, and real-time strategic information application for the Oil & Gas industry met all of Customer ‘H’’s needs.

Wide Ranging Benefits

With the benefit of having Black Sun® implemented; Customer ‘H’ was able to lease rig assets manned by contract staff, guided and monitored in real time by their senior team of engineers at their global centre of operations, in Kuala Lumpur. The data visualised via the application Portal provides a clean, crisp, and customisable user interface, accessible in their RTOC environment, as well as on their laptops and desktops, and with full motion and full function on all handheld devices.

Their Petroleum Engineers are now equipped to remotely monitor the Logging, Drilling, and all operational data streaming out of the active wellbore, and strategically interpret this critical activity in real time. The senior executive team is now able to exploit detailed project accounting information as and when costs are dispersed, and budgets are better managed with a singular and truthful set of figures.

As a result of Black Sun®’s risk mitigation and process consolidation properties, Customer ‘H’ can connect any number of geographically diverse assets to their RTOC, they effectively shortened the time and costs needed as they successfully reached their hydrocarbon targets, and have significantly reduced manpower costs while enhancing efficiency and profitability.

That is the power of Black Sun®