Dundas

Development Engineering

Overview

At Dundas, we believe that opportunities to unlock additional value from E&P projects often lie at the interfaces between the subsurface, engineering and commercial functions. The Dundas team has considerable experience of Process Engineering and Petroleum Economics: both roles are associated with coordination and integration of input from disciplines across the EP business. This positions Dundas ideally for supporting Development Engineering teams and for helping to identify, quantify and liberate value for our customers at the Appraise, Select and Define stages. 

Development Engineering & Project Management

Dundas has helped its clients in the following areas:

• Option identification and screening
• Preparation of key project documentation such as, Terms of Reference, Scope of Work, Basis of Design, Statement of Requirements, Decision Support Package, Project Execution Plan
• Preparation of Technical Work Scopes
• Provision of stage gated process expertise
• Peer Reviews/Value Assurance Reviews
• Embedding experienced staff into client teams
• Decision Process Support
• Development of bespoke integrated asset models
• Coordination of activity across departments

Why Dundas?

Dundas specialises in high added value client support delivered by experienced consultants within or leading client teams. We prioritise flexibility and responsiveness.

Peer Reviews

Dundas provides peer and value assurance review facilitation to provide guidance to project teams and add value to your opportunities. Our peer reviews are structured to cover the whole project:

• Technical
• Economic
• Commercial
• Organisational
• Political

Recent examples include:

• Select to Define gate: reconfiguration of a major onshore gas terminal
• Appraise to Select gate: $2bln field development feasibility studies
• Select to Define gate: £150mln late life asset redevelopment

Project Framing

Overview

Project framing is now used widely as part of E&P project decision quality processes. Dundas has developed a set of workshop tools that can be applied to any project. Our project framing workshops will assist your teams to: 

• Achieve a shared and current view of the project across all disciplines.
• Have a clear understanding of the project goals and value drivers.
• Build work programmes enabling key decisions to be made on time.
• Understand project risks and opportunities.
• Develop clear alternative strategies and understand their impact on the business objectives.
• Clarify the project boundaries.
• Prioritise and plan stakeholder management

Recent Examples

Dundas has participated in, designed and facilitated a large number of opportunity framing workshops. Here is a selection of recent examples:         

• Major Oil Terminal Redevelopment Strategy
• Southern North Sea Gas Evacuation Strategy
• Business Review to Decide on Operating Model for Gas Asset
• Carbon Capture and Storage Project Concept Select Studies
• Subsea tie-back to East Irish Sea NUI
• Central North Sea subsea tie-back
• Mature asset life extension project
• FPSO redevelopment project
• CO₂ flood EOR project

Late Life & Decommissioning

Overview

Dundas has established a track record of providing outstanding commercial and technical advisory services in the areas of late life asset management and decommissioning.

Experience

Dundas has delivered over 30 late life and decommissioning studies including:

• Project framing - systematic approach to setting goals, scope and priorities
• Probabilistic decommissioning cost estimate - delivering real insight on the range of potential cost outcomes, integrating the cost estimate and project risk register in a Monte Carlo simulation
• Decommissioning securities agreement - expert delivery of net value calculations, origination or independent expert review
• Late life strategy - integrating discounted cashflow modelling, decision and risk analysis and multi-discipline scenario forecasting to identify maximum value and or minimum cost strategies
• Contract review - proposing where contract risk is best allocated to deliver optimal contractual performance in the supply chain philosophy
• Pairwise comparison - systematic comparison of alternatives
• Other - origination of option selection reports, conducting peer reviews, preparation of peer review guidelines, conducting decision analysis and provision of risk reviews

Petroleum Economics

Overview

The Dundas team has extensive Petroleum Economics expertise gained in consulting and operating company positions.

Petroleum Economics & Decision Support

Dundas provides the following services for its clients:

• Project evaluations
• Preparation of investment papers
• Model building
• Quality Assurance & Peer Review
• Asset/Hub/Area/Country strategy development
• Portfolio reviews
• End of Field Life planning
• Risk & Uncertainty analysis including Monte Carlo simulation
• Secondment of experienced staff into client teams
• Exploration and appraisal support

Business Planning

Business planning deadlines are uncompromising. Dundas consultants can hit the ground running to help your team to deliver:

• Portfolio planning
• Reserves Booking
• Economic Limit Test and Standardised Measure
• Drilling schedule planning and optimisation

Training

Petroleum economics training empowers oil and gas professionals and lets them engage with decision makers using their language. Dundas offers petroleum economics training programmes specifically tailored for individual disciplines:

• An extensive suite of modules which can be tailored to create bespoke training courses
• Worked examples specific to EP company roles

Petroleum Economics Training

Discipline Specific Training:

Dundas has developed petroleum economics training that is specifically tailored to discipline requirements. The discipline specific training is built from a large library of training course modules and worked examples.          

Discipline specific petroleum economics training has been designed by Dundas for the following E&P roles:

• Project Engineers & Project Managers
• Development Engineers
• Process Engineers
• Environmental Professionals
• Operations & Maintenance Professionals
• Drilling Engineers
• Subsurface Professionals
• Commercial Negotiators
• Flow Assurance Specialists
• Managers
• Subsea Engineers

General & Advanced Training

The following general and advanced training courses are available

• Introduction to Petroleum Economics
• Intermediate Petroleum Economics
• Advanced Petroleum Economics
• Best Practice Economic Modelling in Excel
• Reserves Booking: The SEC Compliant Economic Limit Test and Standardised Measure  

Bespoke Training   

Dundas can work with you to design a course to meet your specific needs from an extensive range of modules and a library of worked examples. From group programmes to one-to-one coaching for key individuals, Dundas has the flexibility to deliver.

Drilling Schedule Optimisation

Unlock Value by Optimising Your Drilling Schedule.

Our optimisation and analysis software uses a proprietary genetic algorithm to generate schedules maximising value, production or the addition of proved reserves. In addition, our tools enable operators to catalogue schedules and quantify the business impact of their decisions.

Background

Major EP companies need to create and maintain a drilling schedule for a large number of drill strings. The objective is to maximise value, production or reserves from limited resources of cash and rigs/crews. The task is complicated by the following factors:

• the data is highly dynamic
• the data is subject to uncertainty
• business priorities can change

For any significant activity levels, it is impossible to optimise this manually or by inspection. The Dundas tools contain a powerful proprietary optimisation algorithm developed to handle the complex scheduling problem faced in the operation of regional development programmes. The tool may be used to automatically optimise drilling schedules:

• Select best projects to be executed
• Determine best chronological order
• Comply with all business constraints

The optimiser objective function can be either:

• Value, or
• Production build-up, or
• Proved reserves additions (PRA)

Functionality

The Dundas schedule optimiser will complement existing schedule planning processes, and currently has the following functionality:

• automated schedule optimisation using a genetic algorithm;
• schedule evaluation in terms of NPV, cashflow, expenditure profiles, production build-up profiles and proved reserves addition profiles;
• cataloguing of manually entered and automatically generated schedules;
• parametric evaluations to quantify the business impact of key sensitivities – e.g. CAPEX availability, string time performance, rig availability;
• formatted business reports, showing a digest of schedule information and allowing quantitative comparison of alternative schedules.

Constraints

Our tools enable compliance with all of your business constraints, e.g.:

• Earliest possible spud date
• Latest acceptable end date
• Project precedence
• Capital availability per annum
• Number of rigs per rig category
• Rig availability windows

Contact Dundas

Recruitment

Dundas is currently hiring Development Engineers, Petroleum Economists, Reservoir Engineers, Petroleum Engineers and Geoscientists. At Dundas you will be part of a winning team and can expect strong support and strong challenge from your colleagues.

If you have a track record of academic and professional excellence, the drive to succeed and the relationship skills required to exceed customer expectations then Dundas would like to hear from you. We can offer rewarding project assignments, city centre working and industry leading remuneration packages. To be considered, please use the contact form below. Alternatively, send your CV to info@dundasconsultants.com.