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Technology Information Session

2007 06 26

Increasing Production Output and Reliability With Improved Operational Scheduling

Tuesday, June 26, 2007
11:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Registration and Lunch
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. Presentation and Q & A

EnCana Amphitheatre, Room 260, Tower Centre, 2nd Level
115 - 9th Avenue SE, Calgary, AB

Invitation

Actenum, PTAC Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada and co-sponsor Encana invite you to attend a technical information session on an automated, interactive approach to optimized scheduling, for maximizing uptime and improving operational reliability.

Background

Scheduling is a critical activity in the oil and gas sector, with substantial economic impact. Done properly, scheduling maximizes asset uptime in the production chain, improves organizational responsiveness, and yields substantial economic benefits. Done poorly, the consequences can be severe: deferred production, poor customer/staff satisfaction, and increased costs are among the possible outcomes.

Recent advances in optimization technology make it possible to implement scheduling software that directly addresses the limitations of manual scheduling approaches, yielding tangible benefits within timeframes that are practical for industrial use. Schedule creation can be automated, while expert user knowledge can be leveraged through an interactive capability. As well, the software enables users to make better scheduling decisions much more rapidly than with traditional approaches, and to optimize schedules according to production goals.

PRESENTATION DESCRIPTION

Actenum will describe its approach to schedule optimization and decision support using case studies, and Dr. Mike Lipsett (Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta), will discuss how this approach relates to reliability management. Actenum will demonstrate two applications-built using a common toolkit- that empower users to handle planning and operations in a collaborative manner:

Maintenance and Production Scheduler. This demonstration will show how preventive maintenance schedules can be automatically generated and then adapted in real-time to accommodate operational changes (such as resource unavailability, or as expected component life changes owning to breakdowns, or inspections). The demonstration will also provide insight into how scheduling decisions can improve reliability, taking into account both accumulated operating risk and expected production volume as the PM schedule is optimized.
Rig Activity Scheduler: This demonstration will show how plans for the use of drilling and workover rigs can be created and adapted in real-time, while taking into account the need to balance maximum production volumes and minimum rig transportation costs.

BENEFITS

This session will provide attendees with an overview of the benefits of this schedule optimization technology, and recent trends in this field of research:

How operational performance can be made more predictable and more closely linked to organizational strategy, by accelerating the scheduling process and showing the impact of scheduling alternatives on key operational metrics;
How reliable, timely, and actionable scheduling decisions can better align the use of resources and assets with those key operational metrics;
How automated decision support for scheduling can aid in smoothing out the daily variances in maintenance and production, by improving response times and providing insight into the quality of scheduling decisions;

POTENTIAL PROJECT PROPOSALS / TOPICS FOR RESEARCH

The presenters propose two projects, focused on the need to make optimized schedule decisions rapidly in dynamic environments, which will extend the currently-available schedule optimization technology in various ways:

Reliability-driven heavy-oil in-situ operation management: In order to achieve maximum uptime, production volume, and reliability, production and maintenance teams must work together. Few software tools support this collaboration. Production planning, resource scheduling, and maintenance scheduling applications are all separate tools meant for separate groups of users. The maintenance scheduling application demonstrated in the workshop provides a common view for production and maintenance to make better decisions, where every alternative is illustrated with its impact on reliability and production volume. Actenum proposes to extend the maintenance and production scheduler tool to handle the specific needs of heavy oil in-situ operations, including maximizing production while minimizing operational risk, and maximizing production according to risk and resource availability.
Environment Management in Petroleum Production: The use of IT is central to environmental protection tasks such as monitoring, data analysis, communication, information storage, and retrieval. It is therefore natural to enhance normal decision support, planning, and schedule optimization applications with environmental knowledge, resulting in systems that balance environmental and sustainability issues with the production needs of the oil and gas sector. Actenum proposes to extend its technology to provide real-time environmental management capabilities, for example in the areas of waste management and minimization, pollution control, resource recovery, treatment processes, and regulatory frameworks.

The presenters are also interested in other proposals for research that may be suggested in the TIS.

Registration Fee (until June 25, 2007)

PTAC Members

Complimentary

Not-For-Profit Associations

Complimentary

Non-Members

$50.00 (+GST)

Onsite Registration Fee (June 26, 2007)

PTAC Members

$25.00 (+GST)

Not-For-Profit Associations

$25.00 (+GST)

Non-Members

$75.00 (+GST)

Please be advised that PTAC reserves the option to charge $ 25 + GST to PTAC members that register and do not attend, unless notification of cancellation is received by PTAC a minimum of 24 hours in advance of the TIS

To obtain more information, please contact
Owen Plowman
VP Business Development
Actenum Corporation
410 - 375 Water Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 5C6
604.681.1262
plowman@actenum.com

DISCLAIMER

PTAC is only a facilitator for these presentations. PTAC makes no representation regarding ownership or quality of any technology described by a presenter, or generally as to the contents of a presentation. PTAC does not endorse any presenter nor the technology presented. Please use your own judgment. PTAC trusts that each presenter will engage in fair trade practices, but does not police or otherwise enforce this policy in any manner.

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For further information,
please contact:

Jessica Lucas, PTAC
Technology Innovation Coordinator
phone 403.218.7708
fax 403.920.0054
jlucas@ptac.org

2007 07 06 LF