Find out how Monterey Production maximized returns from mature wells, reduced field costs and enabled rapid asset onboarding for aquisitions with PakEnergy Production.
Monterey Production Company LLC (Monterey) is an independent oil and natural gas producer headquartered in Tulsa. It operates mature wells in NW Oklahoma supported by a team with extensive experience profitably operating in legacy oilfields.
Monterey produces between 40 and 50 barrels of crude oil per day from multiple wells, resulting in low flow and partially filled oil storage tanks at the lease. This often results in the producer calling in split loads, adding revenue from these sales runs.
To minimize well downtime and keep revenue flowing without interruption, Monterey's team carefully monitors the production decline curve and artificial lift daily including day-to-day volume variances, plungers, casing, and tubing key performance indicators. This data is then used to determine when to call in a workover rig, replace equipment, and perform other production optimization activities.
To lower costs further and maximize margins, Monterey wanted to improve its field ticket management and reduce costs by combining split loads into a single sales run. It also wanted to gain production visibility on a real-time, intraday basis, and generate a wide variety of reporting to support production optimization.
Monterey is looking to expand its operations by acquiring additional assets in its area of interest. It needed a modern field data capture and production reporting solution that could meet its current business goals and growth objectives.
CHALLENGE
Legacy Solution Holds Back Performance in the Field and Back Office
The operator relied on a widely used production solution from a legacy software vendor who continues to focus limited innovation into its on-premise well-life cycle applications. However, it failed to meet Monterey's needs on multiple dimensions, not least of which was poor user experience and difficult-to-navigate screens that prevented all but a few specialized users from leveraging the solution.
- REPORTING & LOAD SCHEDULING: Monterey's existing software was extremely complicated to use, provided basic pre-built reports, and made it difficult for even the most advanced users to configure their own reports. It also lacked robust tools to monitor open loads and schedule sales runs.
- PUMPER FRUSTRATION & DATA DELAYS: Its existing field data capture solution was cumbersome, forcing pumpers through multiple, time consuming screens for lease assessment. It could take days for volumetric data and artificial lift KPIs to be available for time sensitive analysis.
- ACQUISITION ASSET ONBOARDING: Loading asset data following an acquisition was difficult and limited with Monterey's existing production system of record. And managing, tracking, and reporting on acquired assets separately within the solution was impossible.
In addition to the significant limitations of its existing field data capture and production reporting solution, the software was expensive to license and adding custom reports required extensive time and additional costs, all of which eroded the operator's bottom line.
I've worked with most of the production solutions out there and PakEnergy's field data capture is the easiest for the field to use. There are so many really cool things about the reporting, like the production dashboard that lets you instantly see the production and sales picture and then drill down to detailed screens. Superior product over competitors and substantially less expensive.
SOLUTION
Powering Productivity for All Employees in Less than a Week
When Monterey hired a new operations specialist to oversee field data capture and reporting, it was immediately apparent that the existing production solution was insufficient to meet the operator's current and future business requirements. A former PakEnergy Production user who is intimately familiar with the array of solutions on the market, the team member immediately reached for best-in-class technology, resulting in Monterey partnering with PakEnergy.
Deployed securely on the cloud through a subscription-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model, PakEnergy Production can be rapidly configured to match an operator's field data capture and reporting needs. In less than a week, Monterey's entire team began leveraging the solution’s user-friendly screens and powerful reporting.
PakEnergy Production serves as the system of record of all field operations and production data featuring powerful tools to manage and enforce master data, e.g., well names and API numbers.
This master data is used throughout the solution to ensure pumpers enter correct values during lease assessment using the PakEnergy mobile app, present clean and consistent asset lists, and prevent incorrect values from being imported into the cloud-based software.
Production volumes and artificial lift data captured by pumpers is instantly available for analysis inside dashboards and an extensive library of pre-built reports.
At a glance, the PakEnergy Production dashboard shows daily and historical oil, gas, and water volumes alongside field notes, reasons for down wells, and sales. Users can then drill down with a click to detailed well pages with production graphs, equipment, events, and ownership information. The dashboard can also be exported with a click to take data into Excel and other apps for further analysis.
Supporting Monterey's existing workflow for reservoir engineering and production optimization, PakEnergy quickly built a direct import feature for Excel so that engineers could easily bring production data into their spreadsheet solution which, in turn, is relied on to feed data into PowerBI. In addition, PakEnergy configured 2 custom reports for tank inventory and line pressure reporting in just a few days.
MEASURING SUCCESS
Barrels of Oil Per Day
Employees Using Pak
Pumpers Easily Capturing Field Data
Days to Deploy & Start Reporting
Report Types Used Daily
RESULTS
Optimizing Sales Runs, Production, and Cash Flow
PakEnergy Production has become an integral part of the day for Monterey’s entire organization, from the desk of the managing director monitoring KPIs to the hands of pumpers who love the field data capture app. Benefits for all team members and stakeholders include:
- Pumpers - Accelerate validated data entry with a user-friendly app
- Engineers - Track decline curves and plunger lift KPIs for workover and optimization
- Superintendent – Can be less reactive, more proactive and hit production targets with daily variance report
- Operations Specialist - Simplifies well data management and production allocation
- Accounting - Easy access to validated volumes and sales runs for owner payments
- Management - Gain real-time production dashboards and sales data
The operator's team uses 22 dashboards and report types on a daily or weekly basis, including daily production (gross and net), production variance, downtime, plungers, workovers, and more.
PakEnergy Production also empowers Monterey with robust field ticket management. Inventory tracking tools help users understand their current tank levels and when to dispatch haulers to combine split loads for sale. This improves cash flow by reducing costs and accelerating revenue to the bottom line. Further optimizing cash flow, the PakEnergy Production sales reconciliation report helps to ensure payment accuracy from purchasers with a monthly summary of actual volumes compared to statements to identify any potential underpayments.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Positioned for Growth, Lean Operations, and Maximized Margins
Going forward, Monterey is relying on PakEnergy Production to efficiently grow through acquisitions. This starts by enabling easy asset data onboarding leveraging robust import tools and templates that prevent incomplete data from being loaded into the system or that is not consistent with its master data. The "all or nothing" bulk load capability shrinks the time needed to assume operation of new assets under management, reducing the chance of down wells and maximizing revenue.
Additionally, PakEnergy Production allows new assets to be tracked separately through a sub-organization filter. Assets can also be rolled up for an aggregate view of Monterey’s entire asset portfolio.
With PakEnergy as a trusted technology partner, Monterey is well positioned to profitably operate its wells into the future by containing field costs, efficiently and accurately booking sales, creating a real-time view of production, and optimizing asset performance with daily insights at every level of the organization.
