Malaysian Governance Completion Benchmarking Application towards Improving Operation Performance and Cost Efficiency

Abstract

Between the years 2013 to 2014, the completions operations in Malaysia have shown irregular performance across all the operators and service companies. Low uptime level, exceeding budget, non-standardized design, unreasonable contingency level and excessive surplus material are among the identified elements that causes such irregular performance. The value leakage from these elements has become a huge concern to Malaysia Petroleum Management (MPM); the regulatory body of PETRONAS. A strategy was required to set up a uniform way to standardize, optimize and improve the efficiency of how completions scope is implemented in Malaysia. Based on the analysis of over 300 wells completed from 2013 to 2015, MPM set up a 3-year roadmap on elevating the completions performance covering the pre-engineering design, operation execution, contingency computation and hardware inventory management. These elements are the basis that operators use to meet MPM Completion Minimum Standards (CMS). This CMS was set up to outline the performance benchmarking for all operators in Malaysia. This paper will outline the strategy that MPM implemented to curb the value leakage that was effecting the completions performance. The strategy includes the establishment of an industry level collaboration known as Completions Standardization Technical Committee (COMSTEC), which comprises members from MPM, operators and service companies. This committee have jointly produced a guideline to standardize and optimize a complete end-to-end completion cycle in order to meet the performance benchmarking. After a year of implementation, the impact of this strategy implementation was evident. The number of wells completed in 2017 that met the CMS improved by 45% compared to 2016. This optimized execution of completions scope created a value of 19% in cost efficiency throughout all the operators. Although there were challenges in the early stage of implementation, the value that all the stakeholders gained from it have exceeded the expectation and will continue to be implemented in the coming years. Astoundingly the benchmarking drives more new technologies implementation despite in low oil prices period. The relevance of both the performance benchmarking and the guideline are maintained at all times as its effectiveness is constantly monitored to reflect the latest state of the industry.