Morten Irgens's blog

We recently benchmarked our Actenum Rig Activity Scheduler (RAS) application against a manually-derived operational drilling schedule obtained from one of our clients, a large oil producer. We achieved:

• A 6% reduction in rig transportation costs, and
• A 38% reduction in time to production, which translated into
• More than a 15% increase in net present value.

I am writing this from Denver, Colorado, where I am presenting a paper at the SPE's Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, on the worrying decrease in experienced engineers and other knowledge workers in the Oil & Gas industry.

Tom Carchrae is the senior engineer working on Actenum's core platform work. He has been leading the development of a new way of applying Actenum's decision and optimization technologies that I find fascinating. It was inspired by the many newspaper stories about ambulances that have taken too long to arrive at the scene of emergency incidents, sometimes with tragic results.

For most realistic real world situations, optimality is neither achievable nor desirable [1].

Technology is a key enabler of performance. Production organizations use a host of software systems to manage their operations: these include various implementations of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems, and Asset Performance Management (APM) systems. At the same time, organizations are seeking ways to take the next step—to extend these technologies to optimize operational performance and automate operational decision-making. Until recently, however, suitable technologies were not available.

Canada has the longest coastline of any country in the world (243,042 kilometres/151,019 miles) and insufficient means to guard it all. Maintaining a presence in the Arctic, and providing security along the coast, is a challenge (some would call it a nightmare): tasks include providing surveillance, relief for vessels in distress, security management for events (such as the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver), responding to natural disasters, and search and rescue.

Engineers and other knowledge workers have many software tools that help them become more productive and do better work, including various ways of mining, abstracting, and visualizing data. There are, however, many areas where the E&P industry could do much more to empower their knowledge workers and increase their productivity. An important example is the process of decision making.

A couple of years ago I wrote a White Paper in which I discussed the use of technology for achieving operational excellence. I believe this is an important topic, so I want to revisit it here.

“Having data doesn’t give you productivity.
Having better decisions gives you productivity.”
   Michael Trick, Professor, Tepper School of Business
   Carnegie-Mellon University

I thought about this quote during the first session that I attended at the SPE’s Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Anaheim, California, earlier this week.

Drilling managers are facing increasing pressure to meet performance goals, which means that decisions about how to build the best drilling plans and schedules must focus on continued optimization of these goals. This is not possible to do without the right tools.