Edward O. Said:
Our company had rapidly accumulated a large amount of assets which included over 1,000 wells of varied type and lifecycle status. Part of our DNA is the responsible management of assets and their liabilities over the whole life cycle. Our objectives for ARO management were to keep track of what we owned, monitor our closure activities against compliance requirements, and schedule ARO projects. The mass of wells and facilities was overwhelming for manual tracking on spreadsheets, and it became obvious we needed to evolve to an organized database.
1) A full inventory of liabilities could be stored in a single location and accessed by all stakeholders.
2) Updates such as actual spending and status changes could be made and shared.
3) Cost templates could be created and modified over time.
4) Scheduling features allowed for budgeting and long-term planning.
5) A consistent methodology and change of record log provided high confidence ARO estimates for financial reporting and audits.
After almost a full year of adopting ARO Manager, we achieved the following successes:
– XI Technologies assisted us in converting the in-house data to ARO Manager.
– Additional manual inputs and error checking were done in collaboration with XI
– We were provided training and coaching for the application.
– The ultimate success of ARO Manager was having a common source of data that was accessed by both operations and finance staff to generate fit for purpose reports.
– Finance reporting worked well to have a timely update to corporate ARO that could be easily adjusted for discounting and inflation.
– The response from our auditors was very positive as the changes to individual entries could be scrutinized from event logs and the methodology was transparent.
– In progress, we’re working on the blend of budgeted projects for the next 1-2 years with the ARO Manager automated scheduler to improve capital forecasting.
Edward O., VP, Business Development – E&P Company