An anonymous Case Study

I thought that an example of a past project might assist our discussion. One of my first experiences at what I would call an intervention on the front-end stage of project whilst working for a specialist service provider was something of an eye opener. For confidentiality reasons I cannot divulge either the client’s name nor the project, so I will describe the situation as best I can. At the time I was invited to lead a team to reduce the costs of a deep-water project that had already been through Conceptual Design and was poised to enter FEED. However, the project did not meet the economic hurdle, so we were requested to reduce the costs of the Topsides and review the overall subsea architecture costs.

To commence the work, one of our key actions was for our sub-sea team to meet with the clients’ sub-surface team. This joint review indicated that the 60 plus wells could be reduced in number without reducing the plateau oil production rate. With a joint review of the wells location and contribution to production we were able to remove 20 wells from the FDP which were a combination of production and injection wells. We were also able to adjust the sub-sea architecture and optimize the topsides systems. When these changes were fed into the economics the project passed the stage gate hurdle and the project moved into FEED went into production and is still producing today.  

There is a tremendous feeling of satisfaction that one feels at being able to contribute and make real improvements to a FDP by making definable and quantifiable changes, and whilst I would not claim that it was optimized it was certainly closer than it once was. In my opinion there were a  number of lessons learnt during this exercise, some of the main ones are: 

·     Integration of the different work streams and a challenge process are essential and can add significant value to a project.

·     Close integration and communication between service providers and the client adds value to the FDP. It is tough to use paper to coordinate between different parties during this fast moving and developing stage of a project.

·     Economic checks whilst going through the early project stages gives important feedback on the “health” of the project and avoids unwelcome surprises at the end of a work stage. In this case we did not adjust the plateau flow-rate but a higher or lower flowrate might have been part of the answer which economics would have revealed. 

·     Had the project not failed the economic hurdle it would most likely been the project that moved ahead! 

·     Whilst the changes (improvements) were well received and were “game changers” we would not claim that the FDP was optimized – we were not asked to do this nor given the budget to do so. 

·     It does not reflect well on us that as an industry we get to the stage where we are surprised that a project cannot get past the next stage gate. 

I am interested in any other examples or comments – they have all been great so far.