Case Study: Automated Production Charting using Gsharp

DONG A/S is an energy company that operates internationally in production and supply of energy and associated services, always with regard for the environment, health and saftety. DONG's primary market is Denmark. Since 1984, DONG has participated in oil and gas exploration in all new licenses awarded in areas under Danish jurisdiction.

The Asset Management Group under DONG's Exploration and Production A/S unit collects, structures and evaluates data regarding the division's business operations. The group must track the company's nearly 40 assets in Denmark, Norway and Greenland, and factor in constantly fluctuating oil prices. Turning these large and complex datasets into relevant information, and doing so quickly, presents quite a challenge — but with Gsharp, DONG E&P A/S succeeds.

"We have to provide our management with yesterday's production figures every day at noon via our intranet," explains Morten Aagesen, head of DONG E&P's Asset Management Group. "As most of our effort would otherwise be spent collecting and structuring the data, the ability to automatically update the graphics on the intranet saves us a lot of time."

Aagesen's group easily builds all the relevant charts and graphs using Gsharp's point-and-click interface, then employs Gsharp's automatic script-generation feature to produce a batch-run script. This automates the production of a large number of charts and reports for posting on the intranet, either when daily production data are received or by direct access to DONG's Oracle databases. An example plot is on the right.

"Thanks to Gsharp's versatility and the ability to generate scripts, we have managed to automate production of most of the charts and graphs we make on a daily basis. On a busy day we produce approximately 100 high-quality graphs and charts for reporting purposes. Without a powerful data management and presentation tool like Gsharp, this would have been an almost impossible task," says Aagesen.

In addition, DONG E&P A/S used Gsharp to develop an application that evaluates oil and gas prospects. Based on the Monte Carlo Simulation approach, DONG's SPACE (Systematic Prospect And Concept Evaluation) application allows the user to:

• Estimate the chance of discovery based on geological risk analysis
• Calculate distributions of hydrocarbons in place, recoverable reserves, field and well productivity and required number of wells using the probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation technique
• Generate a limited number of deterministic development scenarios representing the Monte Carlo simulation results
• Create production profiles, estimate exploration and development costs, and establish investment profiles for each scenario
• Calculate pre-tax net present value, internal rate of return and expected monetary value for the prospect The application results in a user-defined HTML or Microsoft Word-format report.