Based in Calgary, Alberta, this client operates in five core areas throughout the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. The project was conducted with the largest conventional oil and natural gas producing income trust in North America with an average daily production of approximately 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day plus probable reserves of approximately 729 million BOE.
Our client had well servicing costs in current production fields which were rising per unit of output with the majority of these costs arising from work conducted by third party contractors (drilling companies). Our client’s goal was to reduce these costs without negatively affecting production but required formalized processes and systems to manage and control these costs.
Objectives
Reduce the amount of time to complete a well work over.
Reduce contractor costs for servicing wells in the field.
Develop a routine of work for all of the Rig Technicians overseeing the Field Contractors.
Generate best practices, standard operating procedures, and method changes applicable to all rigs thereby ensuring optimum productivity for the well work overs.
Implement proactive supervision models to enforce optimum utilization of the rigs.
Develop a problem resolution mechanism to engage our client and their contractor’s personnel to identify and correct problems with a focus on permanent solutions.
Assessment Findings
Expectations were not set during the Rig Technician’s tours and action plans to improve performance were not established.
An overall lack of understanding of the roles and responsibilities by the Rig Technicians.
Management tools to plan, assign work and identify / resolve variances were not utilized effectively.
Performance was not evaluated by sectors on a weekly basis.
There was no daily follow-up on departmental performance.
Inadequate lease set up prior to rig moves and well work overs and a lack of planning and scheduling of the well work overs.
Overcharges from third party services.
No daily operating report to measure efficiency and down time for all well work overs.
PVA's Response
Developed roles and responsibilities for client personnel involved with well servicing management.
Increased infield visits by the Rig Technicians.
Developed focused communication structures between the Rig Technician and the Rig Consultant related to timely expectations, progress reviews, and issues identification and resolution.
Developed Management Operating Systems (MOS) to calculate the “pay-back” of well servicing work.
Enhanced the coordination between Client personnel and the contractor’s Rig Crews.
Established expectations for Rig Crews on lease.
Established Rig Technicians follow-up requirements with consultants, contractors, and other third party services to ensure appropriate action plans were executed and compliance to industry regulations on lease sites were met.
The Results
Hover over graphs for more information
Some significant results obtained by our Client included:
Rig Technicians prioritizing well jobs to provide the greatest added-value.
By reducing the time to complete a well work over, wells were fired up and put back in production sooner resulting in increased volume.
Increased accountability of the Rig Technicians and ultimately of the actual Rig Crews.
Improved well work over performance.
Reductions in rig servicing expenses in total and by individual well.
Reduction of third party contractor costs.
Well Work Over (In Hours)
Savings
Well Maintenance Project Savings
Well Maintenance Annualized Savings
Improvement in Supervisory Activities
Oil & Gas Well Maintenance Supervisory Activities
PRE-PROJECT
3%0%76%3%18%
POST-PROJECT
39%0%31%21%9%
Active Supervision
Training
Administration
Travel Time
Available
Long Term Work Continuation
A Client Coordinator was trained and certified during the PVA engagement.
A quarterly audit program of the new Management Operating System was developed for the Coordinator.
PVA conducted audits over 18 months to ensure compliance to the continued utilization of the Management Operating Systems.
These Audits resulted in recommendations and action plans to further identify additional opportunities for improving operations.
I would also like to thank Calgary for bringing PVA to the initial project, which has helped us on implementing new Management Systems. These changes have greatly increased quality communication, accountability, roles and responsibilities. Together we were able to attain positive results with both Field Operations and Well Servicing.
Together with our Partnership with PVA to improve our Field and Well Service we have shown great results and success in continued productivity improvement. The process has been successful in achieving results and we will continue to strive forward to improve in the future.
I was anxious to start the Rig Project as when talking to other superintendents from other sectors as I heard of the improvements that they have made.
During the course of the project the biggest challenge was change in the behaviors and attitudes, which is always difficult at best. The project has definitely helped us implement a system that sets standards, expectations, roles and responsibilities, which also increased the communication process between Field Personnel and with Management.
I need you to work with me to make sure that I am seeing the things that my guys aren’t doing because I am in this every day and I, just like any boss, find it helpful for someone to come in and help me because I want to be better at what I do.
