Technology Update: Pemex Uses Data Management as a Vital Part of Decision Making in the Oil Patch
Authors: JPT staff _ 
Published: February 2015

The E&P arm of Mexican state oil company Pemex faced the same challenge as many upstream oil and gas companies—large amounts of valuable data, tedious methods for managing it, and employees across the company struggling to access, share, and analyze historical and current data to make timely, well-informed decisions. Pemex E&P also shared the goal most similar companies have to optimize production and reserves from its oil and gas fields. Its objective was to find a solution that included a scalable, secure way to manage and track valuable data; man-age systems connected to the data and to each other; and develop effective work processes so that people could use data as needed in their daily work.

Experts at the E&P subsidiary, which manages approximately 70 onshore and offshore rigs in southern Mexico, questioned whether spreadsheets were the most effective way to manage rig activities. Spreadsheets are commonly used to estimate production, track assets, and perform other important oil and gas functions. The spreadsheet is a great tool in many situations—and much more effective than its predecessor, the map. But in situations involving large volumes of data, oil and gas companies are seeking ways to analyze and modify their processes to ensure optimum performance with minimal production and operations interruptions.

As the firm continued to add activities, the spreadsheet also greatly expanded in size and complexity. The company's planning group, business units, and drilling-services organization jointly maintained a complex 50- to 60-column spreadsheet containing drilling, financial, and technical information and the various geological, engineering, and other information needed to plan and coordinate activities for each rig. Each business unit (asset) used the spreadsheet to add its prospects and compete for scarce and valuable resources. The drilling-services organization used the spreadsheet to schedule, deploy, and organize rig activities, and it was the planning group's source for allocating funds to create the right balance between internal supply and demand.

A group of engineers and planners from the three groups recreated the spreadsheet approximately every 6 weeks to reflect ongoing activities, maintenance, new requirements, changing budgets and schedules, and various other fluctuations. Recreating each spreadsheet took up to 6 days and required tedious attention to detail to capture the cascading effect each change had on other activities. Printed reports were so large that they filled an entire wall. For a single moment, people had a snapshot of the current view from which to make critical decisions. By the next day it might be obsolete.

Real-Time View of Rig Activities

In late 2005, Pemex implemented a new Web-based software application to schedule and manage all of its drilling-rig activities. Teams used the old spreadsheet in parallel with the new system for 6 months to catch any problems and then retired the spreadsheet. The company has completed a full year of drilling activity using this system, including quarterly and annual programs, and has planned the 2007 program using the new system.