The Client
This Dallas-based oil and gas company acquires, operates, and develops mature hydrocarbon properties. It has onshore and offshore operations in the U.S., Canada, and the Gulf of Mexico. The company is experiencing a period of rapid growth reflected by a significant increase in new drilling projects and a corresponding increase in new wells brought online.
The Problem
For this company, the acceleration in drilling activities put a bright light on an existing problem: an inability to track, monitor, and communicate throughout the numerous steps and dependencies in setting up new well assets in various transactional systems. This situation is common in many oil and gas companies, and it can prove costly due to delays in booking expenses, inaccurate recording of production volumes, incomplete permit processing with regulatory agencies, and insertion of inaccurate data into operational systems.
Setting up a drilling project involves many discrete steps and multiple departments defined by functional role (e.g., engineering, land, regulatory, accounting, etc.), each having its own transactional system. In most cases, each department manages its unique departmental responsibilities in the process, without an understanding of the inherent dependencies of its work with other departments/stakeholders at other points in the process. At each step in the process, structured and unstructured data is created, and the data created during one step is often required by personnel in other departments in subsequent steps. Typically this data is segregated and resides in a standalone, or at best loosely integrated, business system that is specific to that particular department. Communication is typically catch-as-catch-can. Personnel working in the same department or team communicate via phone, e-mail, and, more typically, by physically handing off hard copies of documents to colleagues in the setup process. This situation usually results in missed phone calls, voice mail messages, lost paperwork, and overlooked e-mail – causing process slowdowns and, worse, process stoppages. More importantly, the situation is reflected in a general inability to pinpoint snafus in the process and to know precisely where the process is and who is accountable for a specific task.
The Solution
The company, which had outlined the core steps in its “new drill workflow” process, engaged Stonebridge to help it develop an automated solution so that information created in the early stages of the setup process travels along with subsequent process stages and the personnel accountable for those tasks have a more complete picture of the well asset. At each step in the workflow, the well-centric application notifies assigned personnel of their specific tasks via e-mail. The e-mail includes a link to Web-based user interface that provides direct links the information they need for their specific tasks. By organizing the process and the user interface around the well itself, all participants can view the status of a particular new drilling project rather than waiting for it to be “thrown over the wall” from the prior department. Ultimately, as new data is added related to a specific well, the workflow process will facilitate the setup of these data elements into the correct location in the various departmental systems. This will help alleviate data entry errors caused by re-keying known values and will reduce latency usually involved in updating applications.
The new drill workflow solution features a custom user interface, which Stonebridge designed to match the look and feel of the client’s existing intranet. The user interface is built on MOSS 2007 and ASP.NET. The workflow engine is built on K2 blackpearl. The custom application database, which retrieves data from the company’s live source systems, runs on SQL Server 2005.
The Benefits
- Increased visibility into the well setup process, from pre-drill to spud
- Uniform setup processes for new drill projects
- Real-time communication and collaboration with personnel integral to the workflow
- Ability to pinpoint process delays and address the problems quickly
- Automated storage of documents and related e-mail in a single repository