Many upstream oil and gas service firms are using technology to improve operational efficiencies to counteract the effects of the decline in oil prices and the following rebound. This strategy can help them decouple their costs from hydrocarbon prices.
One way they’re doing this is by using factoring. This helps them access cash immediately, rather than waiting for customers to pay their invoices.
Overview of Oilfield Services
Oilfield services is a broad industry encompassing many technologies, products, and services that help find, evaluate, develop, produce, and abandon oil and gas. While some companies in this industry focus on specific products and equipment, others offer technology-based services that improve field operations and increase efficiency.
The oilfield services industry is highly cyclical and directly dependent on crude oil prices. Therefore, the company’s value can fluctuate greatly, especially when oil prices are low. To mitigate these fluctuations, oilfield services companies need a solution to streamline their site-job ticketing process and allow real-time visibility into field activity. That’s where Field Service Management software comes in. This platform allows for fast and easy ticket creation, submission, approval, invoicing, and payment.
Oilfield Tubing
Oilfield tubing transports oil and gas from the wellbore to the surface. It helps ensure safe and efficient production, maintains good integrity, and offers protection against corrosive environments.
Ensuring the API tubing connections are compatible with your wellhead and downhole equipment is vital to maintaining operational integrity and preventing leaks. Additionally, selecting tubing capable of withstanding the high temperatures prevalent in oilfield environments is crucial. Since oilfield operations often occur under extreme heat, using tubing constructed from durable materials like thermoplastic can mitigate steel degradation and extend tubing lifespan, enhancing overall efficiency in pressure pumping activities
Wireline Services
Wireline services are electrical cabling technology used to lower measurement equipment into oil or gas wells for various workover and reservoir evaluation tasks. This includes compiling sensitive gamma-ray formation logs, firing perforating charges at specific locations, and managing and manipulating subsurface flow control devices.
Unlike slackline, wireline tools are designed to withstand the harsh environments of modern oil and gas wells, which often have varying pressures, temperatures, and petrophysical characteristics. These tools are also used in well workovers and interventions that invasively maintain or boost production, often requiring explosive charges to crack rocks and expand fissures. These invasive jobs are also known as healthy perforation jobs. These are performed on both land and offshore oil wells.
Slickline Services
Contrary to popular belief, extracting oil is more complex than drilling a well and seeing gushing oil spewing out. Many activities and maintenance services must occur after drilling a well before a company can begin oil extraction.
Slickline services are a range of operations performed using a thin, non-electric wire called a slickline that is lowered into the well for different purposes. Slickline services include the removal of wax, scale, sand, and fill build-ups, terminating flow, setting or retrieving packers (using sealing plugs), running or pulling plugs, and deploying or removing wireline and retrievable valves.
The oilfield services industry is a complex and challenging one to be in. Efficient site-job management and accurate field ticketing are essential to success but can be complex with manual processes in place. Fortunately, new software can streamline these processes and help your business thrive.
.Well Completion
Once an oil and gas company has drilled to total depth, evaluated, cased, and cemented its well, it must complete the process to prepare it for production. Well-completion services include:
- Strengthening the excellent hole with the casing.
- Evaluating pressure and temperature levels.
- Installing equipment designed to optimize production.
There are many well completions, from the simplest open-hole completion that doesn’t even have a production tubing string to intelligent completions that allow real-time remote control of downhole conditions. Almost all completions include a downhole safety valve, however.
In addition to a downhole safety valve, well completions often include placing hardware known as “jewelry” in the production tubing. This jewelry may contain various downhole tools, mandrels, and pressure gauges attached to the production tubing.