Chapter 1 – Introduction

1.01 Introduction (8 min.) Sample Lesson
1.02 The Layers of Upstream Planning (16 min.) Quiz: 1.02 The Layers of Upstream Planning

Chapter 2 - Functions Across Planning

2.01 Functions Across Planning (24 min.) Quiz: 2.01 Functions Across Planning

Chapter 3 - Collaboration Models

3.01 Collaboration Models (28 min.) Quiz: 3.01 Collaboration Models

Chapter 4 - Organizational Models

4.01 Centralized & Distributed Models (17 min.)
4.02 Integrated Models (13 min.) Quiz: 4.02 Integrated Models

Chapter 5 - Data & Technology

5.01 Data Management (10 min.)
5.02 Technology (17 min.)
5.03 Data & Technology Stages of Maturity (9 min.) Quiz: 5.03 Data & Technology Stages of Maturity

Chapter 6 - Upstream Planning Maturity Curve

6.01 The Perfect Planning Process (11 min.)
6.02 The Upstream Planning Maturity Curve (24 min.) Quiz: 6.02 The Upstream Planning Maturity Curve

Chapter 7 - Evolving Toward Integrated Planning

7.01 Course Review (5 min.)
7.02 Approaching Change (12 min.)
7.03 Leading Change (23 min.)
7.04 Your Next Steps (19 min.) Quiz: 7.04 Your Next Steps

Integrated Upstream Planning Essentials / Chapter 1 – Introduction

Lesson 1.01 Introduction

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Transcript

01. Integrated Upstream Planning Essentials - Lesson 1.01: Introduction 02. What you get 03. Tactical Knowledge 04. Actionable Steps 05. Secrets 06. Who am I?07. What is Planning?08. The Matrix

01. Integrated Upstream Planning Essentials - Lesson 1.01: Introduction

There is this interesting space in upstream oil and gas called planning. Depending on who you say the word planning to, they'll think of something different. Executives will think of financial planning or strategy work. Reservoir engineers will think of field development planning, maybe or reserves. Landmen will think about where to get beers after golf. Drilling and completions will think about scheduling, maybe logistics, things like that. But there's a relatively small contingent of people that work across this full spectrum of what we might call planning. I'm one of them. And this space is really fascinating to me because in most oil and gas operators I see, there's a lot of focus on the individual pieces of planning, but not quite enough focus on the integration of those different pieces. And that integration is really in pretty poor shape. So this is important because planning is the support system for how decisions are made. So it's no wonder that there's unhealthy conflict between assets and corporate, between operations and economists, between engineers and executives. There's just not enough clarity for everybody on the full picture. And that's the problem that this course aims to help solve.

02. What you get

I've spent the last 10 years in and around upstream planning. This course is the culmination of those 10 years, but it's not just a knowledge exercise, right. It's what I've learned through working directly with dozens of companies from the largest international oil companies in the world to brand new, PE-backed, E&P companies and pretty much everything in between. But this won't be a recital of what I've learned in order to make myself feel smart. I want to give you the highest leverage principles and tactics that I use in my work now to help companies integrate their planning processes so that you can make positive changes yourself to your company.
I want you to come away from this course with tactical knowledge that you can apply, with actionable steps that you can take, and a few secrets. And let's talk about each of these.

03. Tactical Knowledge

So I want you to come away with a broad view of the world of planning. I want you to come away with an understanding of some of the most common problems that are out there and how to avoid them. And also what matters most with data and technology, among other things, but these are some of the things that you can expect from the course.

04. Actionable Steps

Also, like I said, actionable steps. I want you to be able to identify problems in your existing planning processes. I want you to be able to assess your company's planning maturity. And I want you to be able to build your vision for how you would like planning to look at your company. Depending on your role, maybe the scope of that is just your piece, maybe it's the whole company. But I think helping you set a direction for where you want planning to go in your organization, I would love for that to be an outcome of the course.

05. Secrets

And finally, there's a few secrets that I'll share with you. Well, no, not like that. Things like solving top-down vs. bottom-up or something in between. Deciding between centralized vs. distributed organizational models for where planning sits inside the company. And also the best way to start improving your planning process. Along with plenty other opinions and thoughts, I'll also propose what I see as an ideal integrated planning process. In this way, you'll have at least a candidate for a desired future state, as well as a potential path to start making progress toward it. We'll get to all of that over the course of the course, of course.

06. Who am I?

But first, who am I? So my name is Matt Harriman. I'll avoid an extensive monologue about my existence and stick to the relevant part. So the last 10 years I've been in and around upstream planning. I started out as a reservoir tech, running excel sheets, building Enersight models, creating 265 slide PowerPoint decks that other people would present, but nobody would ever look at again. And then after that, I went into implementing field development planning tools. Enersight was the first one and that grew into the suite of tools that Quorum has today. But I was responsible, at least for a while, implementing these solutions across operators all over the world, especially in North America, but a few around the world as well. And for the last couple of years in my own business, Pod2, I've been doing consulting work to help E&P companies build and improve their planning processes, especially to integrate them. So I'll spare you any more of the resume.
But here's what a couple of clients have said over the last couple of years to give you a feel for kind of the style of my work and how this course will go. I put a lot online, our site, my Twitter, LinkedIn. If you want to find out more about me or the work that we do, there's plenty out there and obviously, reach out, but back to the course.

07. What is Planning?

So first, I want to talk about what planning is. I think it's appropriate to define it at this point. And in this case, I want to define it to be the set of activities that help companies make decisions about how to spend and make money. Pretty broad definition here, but in our case, in upstream oil and gas, that includes the highest levels from what fields should we operate in, what companies should we buy down to some of the lower more tactical levels of which well should go next on the drill schedule? How should we complete it? What vendor should we use? It can include everything up and down an organization, but it also includes the decisions made in between the layers, across multiple layers, across teams. And so when we start to think about what planning is that company, we quickly realized that planning is actually pretty complex. There's a lot of moving parts, there's a lot of pieces to it. It's really a system of systems. So let's start to wrap our heads around it.

08. The Matrix

I like to think of it is as a matrix. So first, we have layers. So starting at the top, we've got strategy & portfolio management. Then we've got corporate planning. Right underneath that, field development planning is what I'll call it. I'll define some of these later on in the course. And then we've got operational scheduling. So these are the kind of the 4 major layers of planning that I see.
Then we have competencies that are common across all of the layers, similar work that must be done across each of them. These include economics, production forecasting, reserves & reserves management, scheduling & resource management, and risk & uncertainty. So these are things that permeate all of the layers, and there's opportunities to integrate them across the layers and that's a good thing, but there's also by this complexity, we have more areas for misalignment, conflict, that kind of stuff as well.
So from the top of an organization down to the bottom, from the beginning of the well lifecycle to the end, across teams, departments, competencies, we can go all the way down as granular as frac sand procurement if we really wanted to. But in alignment with the 80-20 rule, this course is going to stay focused on the scope of this image and we'll touch on each piece. But the ultimate objective is to learn about and improve upon how all of these can work together.
So we'll start there in the next lesson where we discuss each layer of upstream planning.