The better the question
Can you reshape as fast as the future does?
While the world moves to decarbonize, oil and gas companies are hampered by cumbersome legacy systems.
The current oil and gas price environment — and the prospect of reduced or flat demand throughout 2020 and beyond — is forcing companies to rapidly adjust their cost structures. For the foreseeable future, being able to do more with less is a requirement for survival.
However, even with the energy transition looming, continued oil and gas development will be necessary in the short term (and probably medium term) to keep powering the world.
One of the biggest obstacles in well planning has always been a lack of clarity around data and information. With legacy systems, the collection, storage and review of relevant data is time-consuming and frustrating.
An integrated oil company (IOC) approached the EY energy team for help in improving its approach to well planning. At the time, the company’s engineers were spending significant amounts of valuable time transferring data manually across multiple platforms and searching for the latest iteration of spreadsheets and reports. Errors and miscommunication were commonplace due to the manual nature of the work.
In addition, legacy systems made it difficult to capture, collate and review project decision-making, and email and voicemail communication. Over time, historical well knowledge was lost as engineers moved to new assignments or left the company.
The current approach also left managers without a holistic view of the well planning process across a basin, region or business unit. Understanding how individual wells were progressing and where the roadblocks were, was challenging.
The limitations of traditional systems led to value leakage across the well planning process, including delays in project progression, significant cost overruns and unnecessary rig downtime.
The better the answer
Using technology to break down silos
Built on the Microsoft technology stack, EY DEEP integrates relevant data and workflows to provide a “single source of truth.”
The EY Digital Energy Enablement Platform (EY DEEP) team of experienced industry professionals, including petroleum engineers, collaborated with the company to create a bespoke solution that streamlined the well planning process and integrated all of the relevant data and workflows across their well planning and design process. This reduced cycle time by 50%.
Under legacy systems, error traps — such as a single well with different names in different spreadsheets — consumed significant time. It could take weeks or months to identify and correct these types of mistakes. In the meantime, the entire process would slow down.
EY DEEP provided everyone involved in well planning and production with a “single source of truth” — accurate, timely data accessible to all necessary functions. When an engineer makes a change in one application, that new data is automatically updated across the system, eliminating the need for manual transfer from spreadsheet to spreadsheet and reducing the possibility of human error.
The better the world works
Streamlining work processes
EY DEEP automates the process, performing previously manual tasks and calculations to free up the engineer’s time.
EY DEEP allowed for rapid, accurate data updates to all relevant actions — when well parameters change, drilling schedules are adjusted, vendor orders are created and much more. There is now no need to send spreadsheets to team members or to check for the latest and most up-to-date report. That access to accurate real-time and historical data facilitates collaboration and makes decision-making fast and easy.
Engineers enjoy a streamlined workflow through a new unified interface for engineering operations, which enables them to spend less time on tedious manual activities — cutting, pasting and tracking disparate data — and more time engineering, which has cut design and planning time from 12 months to 2 and cost by US$60 million.
The company is now exploring how to use EY DEEP for well design and planning in other business units, as well as for other areas of its upstream operations.
In the wider world, oil remains critical not only to the global economy but also to the daily lives of billions of people around the world. It is of vital importance that oil and gas companies are given the necessary tools not only to update their systems to bring their business models into today but also to adapt to survive tomorrow. EY DEEP is helping oil and gas companies operating in major basins continue to serve those customers by substantially shortening the time it takes to turn natural resources into energy that powers businesses, homes and automobiles. At the same time, it helps oil and gas companies create safer, more productive and more rewarding job experiences for employees, while reducing the risk of negative environmental impacts by minimizing errors in key upstream processes.
