MANAGEMENT BY EXCEPTION IN THE OIL FIELD
In the oil and gas industry, you must evolve to stay profitable. Seven Lakes’ enterprise customers are investing in field operations to compete and thrive. They’re doing this with a data driven technique called Management by Exception in the oil field.
This technique dynamically routes pumpers using an Exception Framework for priority wells. Exceptions are determined via event based algorithms and logical geo clusters to achieve their operational goals such as down wells, compliance or safety. Furthermore, automated Contract Hour Production allows pumpers to skip batteries not requiring immediate attention in favor of higher priority batteries while keeping a tab on production estimates. Watch this short video to learn more.
Here is the transcript of a video I did some time back.
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of The Feed. This is Part Two on our discussion about production optimization.
Today, we are going to get into the details of Management by Exception in the oil field, also known as Pump by Exception or Dynamic Routing.
PUMP BY EXCEPTION OR DYNAMIC ROUTING
So, let’s double click a little into the field level. In the field, we have pumpers who typically, that have preassigned routes. This means that they go around and check each well on a daily basis. Regardless if whether the well may need a visit or not. Now keep in mind, each pumper may have on average of 20 wells assigned to him and his route can cover a distance of 50, 100 or 150 miles. So, you can imagine the amount of wear and tear on the operator’s truck, the amount of gasoline and the amount of time it takes to visit a bunch of wells that may not really need a visit on a daily basis.
Now for example, let’s say wells one and three are down, with Management by Exception, you can send your field resource to only visit wells one and three and then be right back on his way to doing other high priority work rather than visit all the other wells that may not need a visit and are running perfectly fine.
SO ARE DOWN WELLS THE ONLY FACTOR THAT ARE CONSIDERED IN MANAGEMENT BY EXCEPTION?
Absolutely not. So, what else can you do. Well in addition to down wells you might also want to send someone to a well if it is producing less than it was a week ago. Or, you might have an environmental inspection coming up on the calendar and you want to send someone out there based on that calendar date. And, you can even have other considerations such as you want one of your technicians with a specific skill set to visit a well at a certain time. Or, maybe the tank is full on that well and if that tank is full you may have to shut down that well pretty soon so you want to send someone to the site to inventory the tank so that your well can continue to run.
SO, WHAT MORE CAN YOU DO WITH MANAGEMENT BY EXCEPTION?
Well based on a company’s business priorities and needs they can take factors. Like the ones I just discussed and many, many more and create all kinds of algorithms, with cascading logic that spit out recommendations to help and improve and optimize field level activities. This can easily impact production by 1-2% which can mean millions to the bottom line.
So, you now you know why Management by Exception is the single biggest lever in the current price environment that companies can pull on to improve profitability.
If you would like to know more about Management by Exception, visit www.sevenlakes.com.
