Moblize: Can Big data Analytics save Big Oil?

Amit Mehta, CEO

It was a historic moment, in the spring of 1859, when Col. Edwin Drake and “Uncle Billy” Smith drilled the first successful oil well in U.S. The news spread faster than wind and in a split second, the new scramble for oil drew a swarm of people into oil production and refining business. Today, over a century later, the gold rush is brewing again in the oil industry. And this time the huddle is not around any newfound oil seeps, but at the technology marvel of “big data and analytics”—that have set the pulse racing for drilling engineers with its ability to simplify their decision making capabilities.

“Over 80 percent of oil executives today have made big data analytics as their priority in oil and gas space,” says Amit Mehta, CEO, Moblize, underlining the findings of GE/Accenture report 2015. This “sense of urgency” was stoked by the realization of unparallel opportunities the data analytics promises—imbuing efficiency in the drilling process, bringing the competitive edge, and overhauling the decision making capabilities. However, the old patterns have shown us, time and again, how implementing and scaling an enterprise software solution in the oil and gas industry can take years with many speed bumps along the way. So how were 7000 wells, located all over the U.S, able to implement big data analytics ‘right on time’ to create tangible values?”

Enter Moblize, a Houston, TX based company that helps the oil industry break the shackles of old patterns and explore the true essence of big data analytics. Moblize's innovative product, ProACT, an all-in-one planning, visualization, analytics, post-well analysis, and data quality management platform helps drilling engineers to do entire unconventional well planning and construction from one place in less than a day. Accessible anywhere and anytime through mobile devices, tablets, laptops ProACT uses machine learning, coupled with advanced analytics to allow drilling engineers to analyze the performance of wells and take educated decisions in oil and gas well planning and construction.

A Single Source of Truth

With oil prices at a historic low, CIOs are at the crossroads to make radical changes in their old strategies. “Prior to the oil bust, when pockets of CIOs were heavy and efficiency and urgency were not the priorities, IT executives invested profoundly in traditional big data analytics platforms, only to bite dust while taking years in adopting the technology,” says Mehta. The CEO reckons his experience with a CIO whose company faced a similar fate by taking the long roads for its big data analytics strategies. “I was told by a CIO at an oil and gas corporation how they spent millions in big data technology. But after a year, they are still struggling to justify the value of investment,” says Mehta.

We are not changing the rules of the ballgame, simply adding new rules as the old ones are no longer viable for an organization’s growth

Further, an enterprise user survey by Moblize revealed high dissatisfaction within enterprise user community around solutions being piloted barely meeting their needs, very complex to use, require a lot of “heavy lifting” i.e. requires business experts from vendor teams or dedicated resources from their own organization company to extract any value from them. One senior executive at an Oil and Gas enterprise quotes “if you give Lamborghini to a 12 yr old will he have a clue to get high performance from it?”

ProACT gives what the CIOs and engineers of today need; a new way to identify, capture and deliver on opportunities, more quickly than ever which is scalable, repeatable to all enterprise users. As a hybrid solution (partly in the cloud and the rest behind your firewall) with marginalized cost, ProACT can help companies enable workflows that guarantee value realization and high user engagement. “It is designed from an end-user’s perspective—Identify and map the universe of decisions enterprise users are required to make daily; Flexible Architecture—Enable flexible, on-the-fly analysis capabilities through state-of-art architecture organized around those key business questions; Contextualized information Access—Provide enterprise users with access to information organized to address their top daily business questions (i.e. not just give them recommendations via machine learning but let them mine the data if needed), Data Quality Transparency— Provide transparency into cleaning, filtering, and assembling all data sources to help them trust the data.

“The CIOs need to view big data analytics as a combination of technology, delivery, and a price model that supports an enterprise user adoption versus the traditional one dimension “technology only” solutions driven from central teams,” says Mehta. ProACT offers faster adoption and implementation of big data analytics with shorter development cycles, while boosting the engagement of enterprise users.

ProACT is assisting engineers to draw conclusions and develop strategies during well planning and construction that were not previously possible. One such well is in New Mexico, operated by a major oil corporation, where the engineers drilled an intermediate section (8.75”) from 4223' to 9381'.

After skidding, they drilled the offset intermediate (9.875") from 1071' to approximately 7800’, at which point the ROP (Rate of Penetration) dropped. Using machine guided recommendations, they saw that the offset performance matched the first well, and in real-time, they decided to extend the run.

They continued drilling until 8842’ on the offset, adding just over 1000’ to the run before they saw a significant performance deviation between the wells, justifying a trip.

The 1000' extension of the bit run was more significant than simply the ability to drill deeper; it increased the probability of hitting the next casing point in two runs instead of three on the first well, while saving money. Specifically, requiring one less round trip saved approximately 14 hours, equating to a $50,000 operation savings at the rig’s spread rate. The IT executive of the company said, “With ProACT, everything is only two clicks away, which contrasts with the common approach—one tool for visualization, one for planning, and another for analytics and optimization. But ProACT brings everything under one umbrella for split-second decision-making.”

Building Customer Intimacy

Building deeper customer intimacy in the oil and gas industry starts with a big question, “how to match the simplicity of Amazon-type B2C software to drive user engagement and workflows?” “All boils down to adding layers of innovation on a product in quick successions and abandoning the reins of a traditional independent software vendor (ISV),” says the CEO. “Just like Amazon, we possess the ability to roll-out upgrades at a regular pace,” he adds. The company's drilling engineers spend an average of two hours every day on the platform to drive and enable new workflows, which in turn help them save millions. It also ensures pristine quality of data, generation of relevant insights, and scaling the value realized to other assets as with the growth of end-users.

"Making the daily life of engineers better"

Speed of execution is an important part of Moblize’s DNA. The company strives to map “Data to Decision” loops for its enterprise users to reduce the decision latency curve and offer actionable insights at the finger tips. Such steps are evident from Moblize’s “passion for customers” which is one of the seven pillars of the company’s strength. Teamwork, innovation, achieving excellence, trust and respect, integrity, and agility are the other pillars that carry the weight of the company and its mission.

It was Moblize’s mission from the outset to enable its users to leapfrog from the traditional mindset of optimizing patterns or perfecting the known to breaking the patterns or seizing the unknown. In the coming days, the company is planning to release a collaboration platform which will eliminate the needs of exchanging emails for decision making. “The platform will be released for the drilling community first and then for other sectors,” says Mehta. However, the focus of Moblize will be same—to make the daily life of enterprise users better. “We are not changing the rules of the ballgame; we are simply adding new rules as the old ones are no longer viable for organizations’ growth,” ends Mehta.

- Arun Kant
January 15, 2017