Whether you manage 200 wells or thousands of kms of pipeline, field operation teams can’t afford to wing regulatory compliance with an Excel sheet and a monthly inspection process.
Compliance standards, regulations and rules in the oilfield are getting more strict, making compliance management and emissions reduction more important than ever. And regulatory bodies are also upping their monitoring and policing game. Even hard-to-reach sites can still be monitored by the Alberta Energy Regulator through drones.
But compliance activities are often a time sink for field operation teams. When it can take up to a third of a field operator’s time – is this the best use of their time? Plus, there’s still the chance your team identified an issue but it fell through the cracks and never got fixed.
How can field operations teams get easily started on managing compliance, without spending several days every month?
The problem: compliance data tracking is taking too long and there’s no guidance in place to keep it accurate
For many oil and gas operations teams, maintaining compliance in the field is typically a chaotic, month-end process with tons of data incoming from multiple systems. When conducting routine compliance inspections, many field teams are entering data twice – typically on paper forms and then in Excel or another program.
When it takes field operations teams too long to record and input compliance audit data, it takes them away from what they really should be doing: fixing the problem.
Compliance issues can easily fall through the cracks unless they are addressed right away by field operations or can be easily tracked and managed by the foreman.
For example, say you have a ground staining at a well. When your field operator goes to do the routine monthly inspection, he identifies the issue. He even brings it up at the cross over meeting. No one owns the correction activity, and you find yourself back at the start of the cycle with your operator discovers the same deficiency the following month.
Meanwhile, it takes days for HSE and compliance leaders to gather and organize information from different systems at report time. The end result: management has no visibility on compliance trends or issues or access to real-time reporting – giving head office (and ultimately investors) lack of confidence on regulatory compliance.
How it should work: enter the data once, centralize access and get rapid and accurate reporting with compliance management platform
Oil and gas operations teams need to manage compliance tasks efficiently, resolve issues fast and rapidly generate reporting that’s accurate. To get there, we need to change how compliance data is being collected, accessed and analyzed in the oilfield.
Here’s how compliance management should work:
- Digitize compliance audits and inspections so field operation teams only enter data once, limiting errors and allowing updates to happen in real-time.
- Store all compliance data into one central system, accessible to end-users all the way up to management.
- Run compliance reports in real-time, easily gathering information from one system.
With EZ Ops compliance management software, maintaining compliance is simple. Field teams use simple digital inspection checklists that capture the right compliance information. Our easy-to-use software prompts field teams to dig deeper on issues that are anything less than ideal. All compliance issues are tracked, flagged and updated within one system. And they’re accessible by field operators, the foreman, HSE and compliance leaders and head office.
The result? Operations teams get foolproof guidance to consistently monitor and proactively manage compliance across assets, and get accurate timely reporting and tools for rapid response to incidents.
- Operators collect the right compliance data at the right time, and within their regular field activities, savings operators time and mileage.
- Foreman can rest assured that nothing has fallen through the cracks, with inspections proactively scheduled and audits streamlined.
- Data rolls up right to head office, with access to real-time reporting, giving confidence in all compliance management activities in the field.
“During an ABSA audit, it was pretty cool seeing the completed PRD inspections on EZ Ops, everything was time and user stamped which made it very clear inspections were actually being done in the field. The follow up workflows were nice to track as well.” – Crystal Clear Testing
Here’s how to get started
Within 3 weeks, you’ll see the value of efficient compliance management with EZ Ops. We start by:
- Gathering your datasets
- Quick configuration including form setup, onboarding and training
- By week 3, compliance tasks are auto-scheduled, with guidance for field teams to gather data accurately
- Reporting data auto-generated monthly
Choose from a selection of pre-built compliance inspection forms including suspended wells, tank inspections, pigging and chemical tracking – all configurable to meet your company’s unique needs and keep compliance in the field on track.
Make compliance less time consuming with EZ Ops compliance management solution
If your company has failed compliance in the past – you need to show proof of your compliance program. We make it easy.
Operators appreciate how simple and easy it is to conduct inspections and enter the data. We’ve earned 100% adoption in the field because EZ Ops was created by a team of former and current operators who understand compliance in the oilfield.
We have a proven track record of simplifying compliance management for producers. Our customers see these benefits:
- Reduce compliance effort from foremen from 30% to 5% or less
- Proactively schedule hundreds of inspections per month
- Fix compliance risks 20% faster, often same-day resolution
- Cut reporting time from 4 days to 4 hours per month
See how one mid-size E&P company replaced their paper-based compliance monitoring with EZ Ops to improve compliance. Get the case study.
If you’re ready to save days on compliance activities and regain that time to proactively optimize production with EZ Ops – Take the first step. Book a custom demo and see how we make compliance management in the oilfield less cringeworthy and easy to set up.
About Patrick Herren, Director of Customer Experience
Pat’s been operating numerous assets around Alberta for the past decade and knows firsthand the demands of the job working in the oil patch as a former production operator.
Pat leads our on-boarding and training team, providing responsive helpful service that has earned EZ Ops a 100% adoption track record in the field.
