In a tight market with downward swings, governance is evermore critical

If you are only drilling so many wells, so many less than the five years before, is it important to make absolutely certain that your information and your data enable you to position and drill to a successful completion that will enable your company to reach the best target for the precious bucks that are being spent? Absolutely. You might say, “Any fool would know that.” And you are right. And I might ask you, “How do you make certain that you do this? You might take a pause, and realize that my question is a bit more complex than you originally thought.

I may then ask you this question: “Please tell me your absolutely bullet-proof, totally regulatory compliant, surgically precise, backed-up, dead-on process that is super-efficient, cost contained, and totally safety oriented, whereby you know you will not drill into anyone else’s license or lease, and you will not hit your own pipelines (or anyone else’s), and you will hit your target zone. And by the way, can you tell me the risk factors and explain them so that every contractor working on this project is well aware of the expectations of them in doing their jobs, handling the data that they use and create, and their obligations for submitting it to your company, when, to whom, and with what documentation that it has been quality checked, validated and is entirely accurate upon submittal?” “Say what?” you might ask. For sure you might ask me to repeat the question (most people would).

Okay, it might not be drilling wells. It might be constructing pipelines, or it might be any aspect of construction in utilities, or other businesses where assets are designed and constructed, then operated for many years. Or, it might be in any business where geospatial information is used to make decisions and guide the operations. If left to the “ad-hoc” way of working, the results might not be what you expect and you may have to pay for more than that original investment – much more – in terms of money, time, and let’s hope not, human impact.

How will you count on your results to be the best that they can be? What will you do if you have half-finished projects that you have to mothball for the future? What happens then? If you sell assets or buy assets – what will be your “insurance” that you can trust the information that you are acquiring along with them?

Do you need a strategy to set it all straight and make certain that when you spend the precious capital for important projects, its being done the best that it can with the most reliant data? Think about it. There is no time like now.