Oil and gas scheduling software that optimizes all of your operations

Actenum DSO/Upstream is a configurable, interactive software application for scheduling and optimizing oil and gas exploration and production activities. It incorporates a drag-and-drop Gantt chart user interface, together with sophisticated data management capabilities, and makes it easy for you to develop and manage complex integrated operations schedules that are aligned with your business objectives.

You can use Actenum DSO/Upstream to schedule onshore or offshore upstream operations, where resources—such as rigs, cranes, barges, trucks, and crews—must be assigned to activities—including construction, drilling, frac/completions, workovers, logging, and maintenance—according to various constraints.

Actenum DSO/Upstream incorporates a comprehensive model of your upstream operations environment, and together with the fastest optimization engine in the industry, this enables you to:

• Automatically assign rigs, other equipment, and crews to drilling program activities in an optimal sequence, rapidly and reliably
• Interactively adjust your schedule to reflect changes and disruptions, using the drag-and-drop Gantt chart interface
• Automatically optimize your schedule to align with important objectives, such as cost, production output, and equipment utilization
• Effectively collaborate with your colleagues, using a consolidated operations model focused on business objectives
• Rapidly create and evaluate scenarios, to identify an optimal alternative schedule for use in any situation

Actenum DSO/Upstream users range from the largest oil & gas companies in the world to smaller independent operators.

Some use Actemum DSO/Upstream for scheduling drilling operations only, while many use it to manage all aspects of the well delivery process: leases, pre- and post-spud milestones, pad and facility construction, spud/drill sequences, fracturing/completions, tie-ins, and field maintenance.

Actenum DSO/Upstream eliminates the need for error-prone manual data entry and un-auditable collections of spreadsheets and project files. Instead, your equipment and well activity schedule information is centralized in Actenum DSO/Upstream’s database, which handles all upstream activities, and which makes information available to all team members through Actenum’s companion web-based application, Actenum DSO/CX.

By coupling Actenum’s advanced optimization software to Actenum DSO/Upstream’s internal operations model and sophisticated GUI, scheduling is rapid and automatic (for example, to assign appropriate resources to specific activities while satisfying all operational and technical constraints), while errors and inconsistencies are eliminated. This provides:

• Easier management of operations complexity (hundreds or thousands of wells, number of rigs growing or diminishing, multiple types of activities to schedule)
• Increased confidence in your ability to achieve business objectives, such as production output and cost targets
• Improved ability to rapidly respond to budget constraints, equipment breakdowns, or crew availability limitations
• Reduction in risk of non-compliance with lease obligations
• Increased drilling performance and efficiency through insight into critical milestone dates
• Reduction in costs associated with rig movement or idle time
• Immediate clarity on the impact and risks resulting from schedule changes
• Improved team alignment and collaboration around the well delivery process

Actenum DSO/Upstream is usually deployed as a standalone application on a workstation. It may also be deployed as a cloud-based application.

The Actenum DSO/Upstream database may be installed locally or on a remote server, using Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle.

You may also deploy Actenum DSO/Upstream using Citrix.

Actenum DSO/Upstream incorporates an operations model that accommodates a wide range of data about your upstream operations, and it uses this data in the scheduling process. The minimum information needed to use Actenum DSO/Upstream effectively is:

• Approximate durations of activities
• Information about equipment or crew resources, such as working calendars, environmental restrictions, and dependencies
• A way to determine what resources are compatible with an activity (for example, what type of rig may be used on a particular well, or in a specific area)
• A way to approximate the travel time between activities (only if this is of interest)
• A way to measure the quality or value of the resulting schedule; this might include measures of cost, resource use, production targets, priorities, deadline violations, and so on

Prior to deployment, Actenum conducts a Configuration/Integration workshop with you to determine specific configuration and customization requirements. We also explore integration with external applications for data import and export purposes.

Following the workshop, Actenum configures Actenum DSO/Upstream for initial use and deploys the software to users. During the initial use period, Actenum works with you to ensure that your data is imported successfully and to conduct user and administrator training.

You may load data into Actenum DSO/Upstream manually, or automatically. Most electronic forms of data are loaded automatically: Actenum DSO/Upstream can load MS-Excel and MS-Project files directly, for example.

For data stored in relational databases, Actenum provides a connection mechanism for import/export.

Your workflow, business process, and the way that schedules are set up and managed are all very specific to your organization and your operations. So, we have designed Actenum DSO/Upstream as a flexible application with an open architecture for ease of adaptation and integration. It may be used as a stand-alone application for schedule management (replacing other tools such as MS-Excel or MS-Project), or it may be integrated into an existing business process through the available data interchange facilities. You can rapidly and effectively configure the software to meet your operational needs, and take advantage of available data.

A companion application, Actenum DSO/CX (Collaboration eXchange), provides all team members with web-based access to schedules and related information, via a workstation, tablet, or smartphone. Actenum DSO/CX enables users to view schedule Gantt charts, track activities on a map, create reports, and focus on the schedule aspects in which they are most interested.

For each schedule, Actenum DSO/Upstream will also generate a Gantt chart representation as a customizable PDF file. You can email this, or publish it on a corporate intranet.

You can also export Actenum DSO/Upstream data to MS-Excel, and integrate it with external databases, using a connector provided by Actenum.

Actenum DSO/Upstream is able to link a production profile to a well, pad, lease, DSU, business unit of some sort, or a geographic area. The production profile may be represented in multiple ways:

• As a single value with a decline percentage: for example, 300 bbl/day, with a decline of 3% per quarter for the first 2 years, and 5% for each year after that
• As a time series of values, which may be obtained from another application such as ARIES, Mosaic, or Peep
• Using Arps equation decline curve parameters

Actenum DSO/Upstream enables you to build custom reports for specific requirements, and also provides an OData feed to commonly-used reporting tools, such as Spotfire, PowerBI, MS-Excel, and Tableau.

You can also export data to other applications, such as MS-Excel, for reporting purposes.

Getting started with Actenum DSO/Upstream is intuitive for most users who are familiar with other scheduling applications. Actenum provides an initial 2-day user training program at the time of initial software deployment. At the same time, a short training class for application administrators is usually scheduled.

Usually there is one major Actenum DSO/Upstream release each year, providing new features and support for new operating systems and database platforms. Interim releases or patches address other issues as they arise.