Utilities & Energy-164

The Situation:

A major oil exploration and production company needed to improve exploration success, reduce drilling costs, and to improve the on-time delivery and quality of seismic data and services for offshore Gulf of Mexico and onshore USA.  The Highland Group was asked to develop and implement a Best Practice process of learning as a method of reducing total costs by 40% over a five-year period.
 
The Driver Goal:

Put in place a Best Practice process to reduce total costs by 40% over a five-year period

Actions Taken:

The Highland Group provided project management support to the seismic and drilling teams to develop detailed design and implementation actions to achieve the overall goals of the initiative.  Key implementation actions included:

• Mapped and redesigned processes with corresponding assignment of responsibilities
• Developed and implemented performance measures for exploration, drilling and seismic technology
• Developed and implemented a System for Managing the new operations team and real-time operations center and for monitoring well delivery,
• Developed and implemented a methodology for bore hole risking for the Well Planning and Design process and realigned the organization
• Conducted project management training for all Seismic Technology personnel,
• Redesigned and documented the Well Planning and Design (WPD) process,
• Design an integrated Operations Planning process to enable an enterprise view and decision-making basis for operational planning and conflict resolution
• Constructed a Master Activity Plan data base to support the Operations Planning process
• Developed communications packages to ensure effective implementation of new processes and organizational accountabilities

Highland also provided on-going consultation with the responsible Shell executive and his leadership team to ensure a focused implementation of the recommendations

The Results:

• Improved on-time delivery of seismic data to 100% (vs. historical performance of 50%)
• Reduced cycle time by 50%
• Improved quality acceptance to 100 %
• Maintained cost of services
• Reduced costs of exploration wells by 25%