Page 415 - Hydrocarbon

402 Managing the Internal Factors

Planning is carried out to steer the company’s business and operations, and sets out
what activities the company wants to perform. Typically there will be a 5-year business
plan setting out the long-term objectives, a 1 year operations plan for operations
activities and a 3 month operations schedule setting out the timing of the work. From
the 3-month plan, a 30-day schedule of when the activities will be performed is made
firm, running into detail such as the production expected from each well, and any
wireline operations and maintenance work and the co-ordination of surface and
subsurface operations. Even within this 30-day schedule, there will be some
flexibility, but the first week of the 30-day period will be programmed by the
production programmers in detail, determining, for example bean size for wells or
production target per well. Each of these plans will involve a budget which describes
the proposed expenditure.
In addition to the external reporting requirements mentioned in Section 16.3,
there will be internal reports generated to distribute information within the
organisation. These will include

monthly reports of producing fields – production, injection, workover, develop-
ment drilling
management briefs on field progress
safety performance statistics
monthly budget summaries.

One of the important reasons for internal reporting is to provide a database of the
activities which can be analysed to determine whether improvements can be made.
Although the process of reviewing progress and implementing improvements should
be ongoing, there will be periodic audits of particular areas of the company’s business.
Audits are often targeted at areas of concern and provide the mechanism for a critical
review of the process used to perform business. This is simply part of the cycle of
learning, which is one of the basic principles of management.

PLAN

REVIEW
SCHEDULE

EXECUTE
Figure 16.13 One of the basic principles of management.