How do you select petroleum engineering software?

Petroleum Engineering (PE) software is a wide ranging subject and there are many software packages to automate and digitalize the many discipline areas of PE workflows from Surface, Subsurface to Well Engineering (WE) spanning different stages of producing oil and gas. My sharing below is based on my experience as a regional Wells IT/Workflow role who supported the Well Engineers in implementing and using the Wells applications. EDM is one of the WE software which I will use to illustrate my perspectives that follow. The objectives and requirements of EDM is for the Well Engineers to plan and design drilling, well completion and Intervention plus well operations reporting

Acquiring the knowledge of what the Well Engineers do for their work is key to learning on how to use and select WE software. The Well Engineers need to get certified by passing internal exams on top of the tertiary qualifications they already have in getting hired. There are different Well Engineers namely the Drilling Engineer, Completion Engineer and Intervention Engineer who work on the wells at different stages of the Well workflows from drilling, completion to well intervention. Within the drilling, completion and intervention phases, each phase is inclusive of planning and execution. By attending some of the WE courses and working closely with them daily, I acquired sufficient WE knowledge to help me support and implement the WE apps

EDM bulk licenses were acquired at our global Support Center by global Support Team. The regional EDM IT/Workflow Support worked closely with the global Support Center on customizing EDM to make it a group-common software Other resources include: * discounts from purchasing bulk EDM licenses at a global scale * EDM replaced its predecessor DIMS that was only implemented with its operation reporting module at where I worked. And data conversion was done to bring over electronically the legacy DIMS data to EDM that is fully implemented. Hardcopy legacy data was also keyed in manually in EDM to expand data captured - new hardware compatible to EDM was purchased and installed prior to phasing out DIMS

EDM was selected for the following strengths: * all Well Engineers (Drilling, Completion, Intervention) can use it for planning and designing their wells, as well as reporting well operations (drilling, Completion, Intervention) once their designs get executed * Production Technologists can also use it for oil and gas production after the well is drilled and producing * EDM has server version as well as standalone PC version. At offshore location where network is compromised due to nature, the standalone PC version is used. The server version is used at onshore office as the central data repository from offshore drilling locations

The regional IT/Workflow Support gather the feedback from the users via day-to-day interaction or during training session. These feedbacks are either attended and fixed at regional level locally or else get communicated to our global Center Support who work with their developer to customize and enhance EDM at a global scale. Once the global enhanced version is out, it is distributed to the regional local servers as an upgrade to be used by users Some common user feedbacks that have received attentions and customizations via the above upgrade process include: *EDM Well Status Diagram (WSD) is not as easy to use as constructing Well Status Diagram on Excel * some EDM symbols used on its WSD are not compatible with users standards on Excel

EDM replaced DIMS as below: * EDM is used for designing wells as well as reporting their operations * EDM WSD can be generated to display the well depths with casings and mechanical completion tools that the Production Technologists can use for production and the Intervention Engineers for fixing well problems. However, there is shortcoming detailed in next section

Due to some gaps between the EDM WSD mechanical symbols (e.g. of a completion tool) and the corresponding user Excel WSD mechanical symbols, the use of EDM WSD can cause delay as the EDM symbol gaps need be fixed based on user Excel WSD symbols. The user Excel WSD overrules the EDM WSD when symbol gaps exist. And as a quick fix for above, potentially can use the users Excel WSD to link it with EDM database to extract the depth data all on Excel. This can then be used as an interim working WSD (Excel version) until all EDM symbols gaps are fixed. Thereafter, consider which one to be used as the ultimate standards