The top priority for a field operator is to ensure steady oil or gas production from the wellhead and through plants. Keeping an eye on wells and facilities, and making sure compliance requirements are met has become an overwhelming job for many at the oil and gas frontline.
Fortunately, there are many ways to make your oilfield operations more efficient and less costly.
Why all the operations guesswork?
It is common for operators to arrive at the office in the morning and within minutes feel overwhelmed by the amount of data to absorb: production trends, weather conditions, chemical rates, and pumping and maintenance costs.
Between fielding calls and responding to emails, there is only a limited amount of analysis time, before setting or confirming the day’s activity schedule including inspections, trucking and 3rd party vendor visits, and pigging events. Every operator will confess that there’s a certain degree of gut judgment and guesswork involved in deciding what’s top priority. Issues arise, and stress rises so does the risk of wrong decisions
How can we improve field operations decisions and make the job less stressful?
As operators with Reliance, we looked at how technology was improving other well monitoring and production accounting processes and saw an opportunity to better utilize data for operations decisions and scheduling. Our aim was to take all the logic we thought through in running a field, code it in, and analyze and filter daily data to create software to boil up the right actions for the day.
Our team developed field operations software to reduce OPEX and make work less stressful. Field operations software enables operators to make informed decisions about what to do to maximize value and minimize risk.
So, how should an operator’s day look?
In a perfect world, field operators go through a daily routine that would, more or less, look like this:
- Analyzing well performance and monitoring production
- Performing activities that keep the flow lines open
- Planning and supervising oil well performance
- Reporting pump malfunctions and monitoring efficiency
- Reporting and recommending solutions for failed equipment.
And communication across the operations team and with head office needs to work like this:
- Ops teams communicate real-time on tasks completed, or for issues input
- Operations management has self-serve visibility to field activity, progress on issues
- Head office automatically receives accurate and timely reports for compliance, production accounting.
Utilizing field operations software allows operators to implement systems and processes necessary to fulfill their daily tasks without interruption while creating a more productive and profitable oilfield. While all operators desire reliable and repeatable processes, they often lack the technologies and methodologies to meet exceptions proactively and accurately.
How can field operations software take the guesswork out of field operations?
Because we are operators ourselves, our team knows how an operator’s day should work. From the scheduling and compliance to chemical management and maintenance.
Here are five ways you can take the guesswork out of field operations using field operations software:
- Automate scheduling to ensure urgent and routine tasks are completed
Scheduling operations activity well is the start point of running efficient, productive assets. But getting that right is painful with one-off issues competing with routine maintenance and compliance monitoring. With fewer people on operations teams managing more assets, stuff can get missed. Technology can play a major role in taking the guesswork out of scheduling by automating routine tasks and mining data to suggest the top priorities of the day by location to boost production, save on OPEX and keep companies compliant.
- Improve communication and data access
Operators are often lucky if they receive a spreadsheet once a month, and then it is up to them to interpret and analyze the data included in the document. Improving the way data is collected, presented, and shared, can be a total game-changer. Plus, operators aren’t always lucky enough to receive consistent reporting from their team members or external partners. In centralized field operations software, data goes in and out in a standard format for easy interpretation and generation of reports.
- Streamline compliance
Operators need to know immediately if there is an issue with production controls or compliance. Many of these problems may go unnoticed, often costing millions of dollars and many hours of troubleshooting. Proper feedback processes to comprehend anomalies when they occur can also be achieved with the right field operations software.
- Reduce trips to the field
With the right access to data, there are plenty of opportunities for growth and increased profitability. Field operations software can be used to optimize operational efficiency by analyzing, interpreting, and acting on real-time production data. Investing in the right software, equipment, and technology would unlock this potential.
- Increase reporting speed
sand accuracy
The longer it takes for field workers to visit wells manually, make changes, and receive new monitoring data, the more downtime and decreased apparent production. It could even take several months before management realizes whether the changes have been implemented and many more before they acknowledge whether they are working. Field operations software that is created by operators for operators takes this lag time into account and helps operators avoid any production downtime.
How can EZ Ops field operations software help?
We developed EZ Ops field operations software to equip operations teams to generate the most value in their workday with the least stress, rework, drive time which also amounts to reducing OPEX and downtime.
EZ Ops is already an established platform in the oil and gas industry specialization, with companies representing over 10% of Canadian production using our solution. If you can tell us where guesswork causes admin hassle, stress, and driving time, we can show you how EZ Ops can reduce your workload and make your decisions easier.
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.
