Engineering Tip: Don't Ignore Production
In upstream oil and gas, production is the only phase in the life of a well where you actually MAKE money. Every other department spends money. Drilling and Completions spend A LOT of money. Building pipelines costs A LOT of money. And where does the money come from to pay for all of these things? From Production!
It may seem obvious that Production is important but if you look at how many companies operate, they seem to place very little value on production. Why is this? It's because all of the big budgets, and therefore all of the attention and focus, is at the drilling and completion level. This is not to say that we shouldn't put a lot of attention on drilling and completion. We should, because there is a lot of money at stake. However, I've seen many many times where decisions are made in the drilling and completion phase, that have huge impacts on future production, yet there is almost no thought given to the impact on production.
For example, how often do we see new wells get completed with high tubing set points, or packers downhole? These decisions have a major impact on the ability of that well to keep up production over time. And far too often these decisions are made by drilling and completion engineers, with no consideration on how this will limit production over time. Too often the attitude is, "TD the well, complete it, move on and never look back".
Production is the only revenue stream for an E&P company. It is literally the life-blood of the company. We should start to take it a little more seriously and quite treating it as the red-headed step child of oil and gas operations. When the money is getting tight and the budgets get slashed, you'll wish that you had prioritized your revenue stream a little more.