This is the 3nd blog in a series about VERDAZO Diagnostic Workflows
A big part of successfully navigating through unpredictable economic times is a predictable cash flow. The backbone of any cash flow is the ability to deliver your forecasted production. It also plays a big part in your ability to execute your plans, shareholder confidence and your reserves evaluation. This blog focuses on a workflow that helps you identify and focus on the wells that are deviating the most from their production forecast. This involves integrating your field data capture system with your forecast/economics system.
For details on the steps that make up a typical diagnostic workflow check out the last two blogs:
Optimizing Production Performance
Optimizing Financial Performance
Let’s jump right into our workflow examples…
1. Identify and Prioritize
The chart below shows:
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- the Contextual Measure (on the y-axis) Percent Variance (%). This tells us the degree (as a percent) to which we are varying from our forecast. In this example a negative value means our production is greater than forecast, and a positive value means forecast is greater than production.
- the Diagnostic Measure (on the x-axis) is Volume Variance (bbl). This tells us the total production impact on our forecast. This ultimately represents the impact on cash flow.
- the wells (each well is a point) have been Categorized by “On Production Year”. We would expect older wells to have a well defined decline and thus be more predictable.
I have identified a well for further investigation. It has both a large percent variance and a large volume variance.
2. Inform and Assess
The chart below shows that this well has experienced a significant downtime event in the last month that resulted in 70% downtime. The nature of this downtime event will require additional investigation.
3) Investigate
The next step in the investigation may involve a chart like Lost Production Over Time or Details of Workover Activity (both below) ... examples from the blog post on Optimizing Production Performance.
A diagnostic workflow will evolve over time, as new information is available and you invent new visual techniques to help you Identify, Inform and Investigate opportunities. It’s important to approach these workflows as an inventory of visual perspectives that will help you navigate to the best possible insight and decision.
