The Real Time Advantages of Oil Exploration Metrics

Business intelligence or more popularly known today as business performance management system used to be restricted to the territories of the chief financial officer of an oil exploration company. The other key persons granted access to these intelligence data in the company were the E&P, accountants and financial analysts. The purpose of having such business intelligence and performance management systems was to be more efficient in handling resources, reduce cost and augment return on investment. But as the operation of the oil company grows, its demand for integration of data for operation and finance has also increased. There are now more people, in the company than ever, who are in need of greater access to these data. A new approach in business intelligence has now become the driving force of these companies; this is called the oil exploration metrics.The principles behind the new metric for oil exploration are basically the same as those traditional business intelligence tools. The improvement is found though on the presentation side. See, as the company grows, its volume of data also expands. Data like power computation and surveillance instrumentation need to be processed efficiently and intuitively using cost effective visualization techniques. These visuals will then become available not only to accountants, CFOs, CEOs and financial analysts but also to operators, geoscientists and engineers. Everyone is a cog in the wheel in an oil exploration venture; that is why everyone should be given access to these overwhelming yet critical data.The metrics for oil exploration today covers not just the financial side. There are essentially three decisive factors that will lead a company to producing more oil and spend fewer resources be it financial or non-financial. These factors are constant troubleshooting on upstream assets, monitoring and incessant production planning. Oil exploration demands real time visualization and monitoring of operation that will help key persons in fast decision making and analysis. And it has never been truer today, as oil exploration becomes more remote and more challenging. Data from different locations and multiple departments need to be processed fast. What took weeks and days before, now only takes minutes to measure.There are generally three areas of an oil exploration project, where metrics play an important role. The three areas where potential metrics can be drawn are costs and expenses, revenue and realization and production. Under the costs and expenses aspect, the following are the most common key indicators: ad valorem taxes, lease operating costs, work over costs per boe, lifting costs per boe and lifting costs. This aspect has the least number of metrics however tracing the cost of the operation is just as important as tracing how profitable the exploration is.Under the revenue and realization aspect, the following metrics indicate good and bad performance: profit – noe, oil per barrel, gas per $ Mcf, net processing income, lease income, oil sales and gas sales. Under production, the following serve as metrics: well downtime, water cut, well tests, well head pressure, gas oil ratio, liquids yield, water produced, overall daily and monthly oil production.The impact and importance of oil exploration metrics have dramatically improved over the last few years. No longer will engineers and accountants wait for weeks to analyze and come up with good decisions. With these metrics, analysis of engineering and financial data is now made real time.