4 Keys To Ensuring A Pathway To Successful Production Optimisation

In the era of the smart oilfield, truly effective production optimisation is predicated on the right data being delivered to the fingertips of key staff in real-time.

Maximising total recovery over the long-term requires an integrated data strategy that collates information together from across multiple disciplines, often in remote and challenging environments.

Companies who fail to master production optimisation, risk not only shortfalls in efficiency, but also run the gauntlet of operational production data becoming unviable and inaccessible in the long run.

For those organisations with entrenched company cultures and unwieldy, world-spanning management structures, aligning data and information from across the engineering and geosciences divisions can be a mammoth task, requiring not only precise coordination but a lot of will from the upper echelons of management.

In our work with operators NOCs and IOCs from the North Atlantic to the South China Sea, the following four traits have proved vital for any company that has introduced a successful real-time production optimisation system at the heart of their business.

Champions for change

With the over-arching corporate overhaul needed to integrate real-time production optimisation across a company, organisation-wide change must be lead from the top, with full buy-in from the commanding heights of the management.

This kind of commitment is vital for a process that may take years from conception to completion - a job that may well outlive the corporate lifespan of some of the people that initiate it.

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Employee Engagement

Leading from the top on major projects is vital to guarantee the safe passage and "sponsorship" of any plans. Equally important is getting a significant buy-in from those employees whose departments will be restructured or possibly triaged.

Rejuvenating the inner workings of an organisation can often be a painful process but the maxim to work to is definitely "if there is no struggle there is no progress."

Change management

The smooth and successful metamorphosis of an energy company cannot happen in the 21^st century marketplace without a well-thought out change management strategy.

Change management can be thought of as "the structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organisations from a current state to a desired future state."

Change management will often include elements of "benefit communication", managing resistance to change in order to help to grease the skids of employee engagement, training upgrade schemes to re-skill the workforce, and monitoring the speed that changes are adopted and fine-tuning accordingly.

Standardisation

With the amount of data coming into the digital oilfield, continuity of operating standards is key to ensure optimal performance is achieved.

Nowhere is this more important than in the field of data management, where alignment of data standards can save time and effort when translating information between intercompany disciplines, and also can avoid confusion when dealing with third party contractors.