Squeezing more oil and gas out of both green field developments as well as existing fields has been a priority for international oil majors such as Shell, BP, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips for years.
By working with these companies, Jardine has built a reputation for providing relevant and quantifiable data in the myriad of optimisation initiatives thrown at every oil producing installation.
A typical oil producing installation has perhaps some 30 to 40 optimisation and efficiency programmes that the management has to carry out. This comes on top of everything else in addition to the running operations. Being able to filter out those programmes that either don’t work or overlap other measures would of course be a good idea. Doing it right, through scientific methods based on decades of experience from the oil and gas industry is what Jardine specialises in.
Performance improvement data in a business plan context
“Still, performance improvement data is just a tool. What needs to be done is building well-founded performance improvement data into the business plan and the plans for the running operations. Providing the best possible foundation for decisions in a business context is the goal for what we do. Just coming up with another optimisation initiative and walk away does not create much value for the companies we serve,” says Hari Vamadevan.
The big picture
“It is crucial that the decision makers are enabled to see the big picture. There is an obvious link between asset integrity and asset performance improvement. However, this link has not necessarily been duly reflected in the many optimisation initiatives used in the industry,” says Iain Light, Chief Operating Officer of DNV Consulting.
He continues: “By itself, each initiative or approach is reasonable, but without a holistic view and proper coordination, the result might even be counter productive. Platform managers usually have enough on their plate, so they are sometimes forced to make ad-hoc priorities on which initiatives to pursue.”
Providing operational managers with solutions that have been designed to take into account the business aspects as well as the integrity and safety aspects simplifies and improves these decisions.
Outside oil and gas
It is not only in oil and gas where these services are having a major impact. Iain Light continues, “we have recently secured a major contract with Network Rail in the UK that simulates the entire West Coast Mainline Train Routes and this will be used as a key part of the UK governments Trains on time project to measure the effectiveness of the train operating companies.” DNV Consulting is actively promoting the Jardine service line to other market sectors and expect some exciting contracts outside the traditional markets.
“The goal is to enable the management to base their decisions on an overall understanding of how this all plays together with their long term business plans,” concludes Iain Light.