The William J. O'Brien family legacy in the domestic oil and gas exploration, operations, production and drilling contractor businesses began in the early 1930s. Today, O’Brien Energy Company is an active oil and gas producer and exploration business, focusing on acquisition and development-driven programs. The company has 19 employees and operates 100 wells across four states; Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi, with headquarters in Shreveport.
With the constant decisions demanded in the oil and gas industry – and as operating expenses escalate – choosing the right service for field data collection becomes a crucial component of business management.
From seasoned industry professionals to those that have more recently joined the oil and gas industry, the staff at O’Brien Energy Company chose the FieldDIRECT® service because they felt it offered the most timely and accurate monitoring, tracking and reporting of pumper data available.
ice President of Operations Steve Harris began his career at O’Brien in the oil and gas industry as a pumper in 1981. Office Assistant Lorali Menard joined the industry in 2001. Both use FieldDIRECT on a daily basis and both value the accuracy and timeliness the service provides.
Easy Data Access Available Companywide
FieldDIRECT’s real-time delivery of information gives everyone at O’Brien immediate access to daily production data as it is collected in the field. By supplying multiple users access to the information they need, internal and external reporting has been streamlined across the organization.
“The decision to choose FieldDIRECT was not a tough one. I could see that even with the advances in field and office tools designed just for this industry, many experienced, professional staff members were still spending too much time tracking down and reworking the data they needed,” said Harris. “FieldDIRECT is allowing our technical staff to devote their time to analysis instead of creating reports,” he added.
Daily, Monthly Workflow Reporting Automated
Previously, compiling data from O’Brien’s 100 wells – and the auditing of the data – created a significant time lapse from the time it was recorded in the field to actual in-house use.
By using reports generated automatically in FieldDIRECT, Lorali Menard’s time to produce a monthly summary has been reduced from one day to about 20 minutes. Menard also uses the service daily to run activity and gas meter reports.
FieldDIRECT is allowing our technical staff to devote their time to analysis instead of creating reports.
Steve Harris,
Vice President of Operations, O’Brien Energy Company
“The Pivot Tables are a great tool for displaying volumes – the data is already calculated for us,” said Menard. Time spent supplying information to accounting has also been reduced. Additionally, the data collection process for state reporting has been condensed.
Overall, the time spent by production assistants recording and re-working data at O’Brien has been reduced from two full-time positions down to one. This move alone is saving O’Brien more than the cost of the FieldDIRECT service. At $10 per month per well for 100 wells, O’Brien’s investment in FieldDIRECT is $12,000 annually – much less than the cost of a staff person.
The combination of Steve’s field and management experience gave him a vantage point to easily see the full benefits that FieldDIRECT offered to O’Brien. “Many of the contract pumpers we work with were already using FieldDIRECT. That made the implementation that much easier,” he concluded.
