Efficiency and optimisation: key differentiators in a low margin environment
Few regions have suffered more from the ongoing oil price slump than the North Sea. With markets significantly oversupplied, the price of a barrel of Brent crude has fallen from $115 in mid-2014 to around $40 currently. Operators and services firms have borne the brunt of the associated financial downturn, with companies throughout the industry making swingeing cuts in personnel to guard against further losses and survive the recession.
With more jobs on the line, these companies are increasingly looking to innovative technologies to help improve efficiency and boost asset utilisation rates. In exploration and production as much as 5%-15% of scheduled drilling can be lost to downtime caused by operational failures involving human error. Meanwhile, productivity can also be weakened by inconsistent or inaccurate data as a result of erroneous reporting.
As such, mobile applications are playing a more significant role in the sector; no longer seen as gimmicks, mobile apps are now important tools in the push to improve productivity. Apps provide reliable data by checking to verify accuracy and prevent instances of human oversight.
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Asset management is a key factor in the productivity of oil and gas operations. The ability to automate processes and move reporting to ‘real-time’, allows us to streamline bureaucracy and evaluate, plan, manage and mitigate the impact of asset downtime.
To fulfil functional potential, operators should implement a systems approach to asset optimisation, ensuring that reliable data is produced and made available throughout the company. In terms of production, operators require this data to evaluate equipment performance and by automating analytics, significant gains can be made in improving efficiency and throughput. In company offices and facilities, reliable data influences decisions from procurement, through production scheduling to shipping.
In boardrooms, the data analysis provides a clearer understanding of company performance, fluctuating costs and asset utilisation on operations. With non-productive time (NPT) costing drilling contractors upwards of $100 million per year, mobile apps provide a solution to inefficiency throughout the sector. The savings might be the difference between survival and closure.