Bertrand (senior advisor), Author at VERDAZO

November 16, 2015 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Type Curves Part 1: Definitions and Chart Types

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. Type Curves or type-well curves are a foundation of reserves evaluations, development planning, production performance comparisons and completion optimization analysis. The dangers of not understanding the complexities of Type Curves, and failing to communicate how they were designed/developed, can result in large statistical variability, inconsistent information used in development decisions, and unattainable economic plans (especially in the unforgiving times of low commodity prices). This blog series will focus on essential Type Curve considerations and analytic techniques that should be part of their development and use. The complete contents of this multi-week blog series will be presented at the upcoming SPE talk Understanding Type Curve Complexities & Analytic Techniques on Dec. 1st, 2015. Please join us. There are many ways to build Type Curves and they can yield significantly different results. In the example below, the left image shows six versions of a Type Curve for the same data set. The right image shows how different the cumulative revenues are for the first...

June 15, 2015 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

How useful are IP30, IP60, IP90 … initial production measures?

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. The presence of IP30, IP60, IP90 … has increased in recent years. Is this a trend that has evidence to support its growing use? … or is this a trend that should be accompanied with appropriate caution? Let’s find out! To truly answer this question we need to establish a context for our assessment. This includes: Understanding each production measures’ strengths and weaknesses (we covered this in last week’s blog “What production measure should I use?”) Comparing IP values against other production measures Use “correlation to EUR” as our “measure of usefulness” (from a reserves perspective) Another “measure of usefulness” that we can explore in a future blog is the IP correlation to 60 month cumulative production. This is the biggest money making period for horizontal wells and where payout takes place. Some preliminary analysis suggests that the correlations would be dramatically higher than they are to EUR. But let’s get back to today’s focus… we’ll start with the conclusions, then cover...

June 8, 2015 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

What production performance measure should I use?

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. Measuring and comparing well production performance is the foundation of production analysis in the oil and gas industry. The challenge is deciding what production performance measure to use and understanding their strengths and weaknesses. To illustrate this, take a look at the following charts which compare the average production profiles of Open Hole completions to Cased completions in a Montney study area. Three different production measures will yield three different conclusions: using Peak Rate, I would conclude that Open is dramatically better than Cased using Cumulative Production after 36 months, I would conclude that Open and Cased are about the same using EUR, I would conclude that Cased is better than Open Why measure production performance? Measure performance against an expectation or plan Compare wells, plays, companies, technologies …. to one another Gain insights into optimal performance design (e.g. proppant loading, frac spacing, horizontal direction …) Use as a proxy for EUR (I’ll cover this in detail in my next blog with a comprehensive correlation analysis on four...

April 25, 2015 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Oil Sands Production Will Attenuate Impact of Reduced Drilling

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. The enjoyable part of writing a blog with a discovery analytics tool like VISAGE is that a simple look into an area of interest quickly unravels into a detailed investigation with many unanticipated insights. My plan to review in-situ oil sands production with a couple of charts turned into a comprehensive story told with 7 charts and 1 map. By the end of this blog you will, hopefully, have a new perspective on the oil sands and the positive impact it will have on the near term Canadian oil production decline. Oil Sands Dominate Oil Production in Canada In February of 2014 oil sands first dominated all other oil production in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB). As of February 2015 it now makes up 54% of all WCSB oil production (excluding oil sands mining related production). As the chart below shows, production growth in the oil sands has been at a consistent high since 2010. Relative to all the other wells that have ever produced any oil (shown in the...

March 23, 2015 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Drilling Activity & Production Forecast for 2015

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. If someone asked you to predict what the Western Canadian 2015 year-end production and drilling numbers would be, and gave you 1 hour to do it … could you? Well that’s exactly what happened to me last week and I was up for the challenge using VISAGE. Skip to the end of this blog for the Low and High Scenario results. My approach had to be simple for it to be accomplished in an hour. It all hinged on getting the Drilling Activity numbers figured out first. It turns out that since 2006, the Drilling Activity up to the end of February has consistently been around 31% of the year-end total. With that as a starting point, I created this chart show the 2015 drilling activity forecast relative to the last 9 years. Notice the dramatic step change after 2008. This is attributable to a stronger emphasis on horizontal drilling and a reaction to the price drop experienced in 2008 ( go...

March 2, 2015 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Time to rethink the mcf to BOE conversion factor?

Is it time to rethink the 6:1 mcf to BOE conversion factor?

February 23, 2015 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Completion Analysis Considerations for Reserve Evaluations

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. As completion designs and technologies change over time it is increasingly difficult to analyze and quantify the impact that completions have on production and value. As a simple illustration, we can see in the Montney how some key completion parameters have changed over time and the impact they have had on initial gas production rates. We can also see that there has been a shift in the dominant technologies year over year. Not understanding the impact that completions have on production could result in a valuation that is not optimized. The challenges of quantifying and communicating the production impacts of completion design parameters can be addressed if you understand them, use a variety of analysis techniques and have the tools to quickly perform those analyses. Check out the SPEE presentation I did last week to learn more about “Completion Analysis Considerations & Techniques for Reserve Evaluations“. ___________________________________________________________ Frac Data provided by: Well Completions and Frac Database from Canadian Discovery Thanks for reading. I welcome your questions...

February 16, 2015 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

VISAGE Diagnostic Workflows: Variance from Forecast

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. This is the 3nd blog in a series about VISAGE Diagnostic Workflows A big part of successfully navigating through difficult economic times is a predictable cash flow. The backbone of any cash flow is the ability to deliver your forecasted production. It also plays a big part in your ability to execute your plans, shareholder confidence and your reserves evaluation. This week’s blog focuses on a workflow that helps you identify and focus on the wells that are deviating the most from their production forecast. This involves integrating your field data capture system with your forecast/economics system (like Value Navigator or Entero Mosaic). For details on the steps that make up a typical diagnostic workflow, check out our last two blogs: Optimizing Production Performance Optimizing Financial Performance Let’s jump right into our workflow examples… 1) Identify and Prioritize The chart below shows: the Contextual Measure (on the y-axis) Percent Variance (%). This tells us the degree (as a percent) to which we are...

February 9, 2015 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

VISAGE Diagnostic Workflows: Optimizing Financial Performance

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. This is the 2nd blog in a series about VISAGE Diagnostic Workflows Let’s face it, oil and gas producers are in the business of making money, not making oil and gas. The current market has made this a poignant reminder to the industry. That’s why we’re doing this blog series on “diagnostic workflows”, an analytic approach that helps you focus your efforts where they count the most. This week’s blog is all about Financial Performance: optimizing netback and minimizing operating expenses. Check out last week’s blog on Optimizing Production Performance for the details about the three steps that make up a typical diagnostic workflow: 1) Identify & Prioritize 2) Inform & Assess 3) Investigate Analyzing Financial Data in a Rapidly Changing Market The biggest challenge to analyzing Financial data in a rapidly changing market is “data latency”. It can take months for costs and revenues to get booked to wells … and some of those costs are annual costs. While VISAGE has...

February 2, 2015 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

VISAGE Diagnostic Workflows: Optimizing Production Performance

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. What oil and gas producer doesn’t want to be efficient, to “achieve maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense”? In a market of low oil and gas prices, efficiency is on the mind of most VISAGE users. That’s why we have been equipping them with “diagnostic workflows.” Diagnostic workflows allow people to identify, prioritize, assess and investigate the greatest opportunities to optimize … in just seconds. The three main areas where our clients have deployed diagnostic workflows will be the focus of this blog series: Production performance: reduce downtime and identify reoccurring patterns Financial performance: optimize netback and minimize operating expenses Performance to forecast: ensure cash flow is there to support upcoming activities and avoid potential reserve write-down. A diagnostic workflow can be applied to any optimization effort. The structure of the workflow is quite simple and relies on a series of charts and/or reports that fulfill each of these steps: 1) Identify, & Prioritize What are the biggest opportunities? Which...

Posts by Bertrand (senior advisor)