A hectic and productive first year for APT USA
19 May 2022 – Almost one year go Applied Petroleum Technology (APT) announced that it would establish an office and ramp up its presence in Houston, Texas, to support US operators. Here is a summary of the US team’s main achievements during that time.
“To say that it has been a hectic year is an understatement. But it has been great. The US geochemistry community is tight knit but anyone who wants to be a positive contributor is welcomed with open arms. That is certainly our experience,” says Scott Granger, APT’s regional manager for the Americas.
When APT decided to set up shop in Houston, Granger was one of two new senior hires. The other one was Craig D. Barrie who took on the role as APT’s global product director based out of Houston. They joined petroleum geochemist Richard Patience, who had been APT’s representative in Houston for the five years prior to the establishment of APT USA Inc.
Later, in February this year, the team grew further through the appointment of ConocoPhillips veteran Eric Michael as APT USA’s new chief geochemical advisor.
“We are extremely happy with the team we have built so far. Our small team, bolstered by the support of our APT colleagues globally, consists of highly experienced geochemists that support operators and other clients from A to Z. We believe this approach is welcomed by the oil industry,” says Scott Granger.
Sharing is caring
Establishing the company and hiring senior personnel is one thing. Explaining how APT can add value to operators’ operations is a different matter.
“We are big believers in sharing knowledge and experience in order to identify even smarter and more cost-efficient solutions. From day one we said that we wanted to be positive contributors to the geochemistry community in the USA. As a result, we have attended, presented at and sponsored a number of conferences and events for the past year,” says Craig D. Barrie.
For example, APT’s US team has presented at the AAPG South West Section Annual Convention, attended URTeC and the WTGS 2021 Fall Symposium, exhibited and presented at IMAGE 2021, presented at an AAPG Academy, attended the NAPE conference, been part of the panel of the Energy in Data conference, presented at SAGE 2022 and were invited to give luncheon presentations to the Shreveport and Lafayette Geological Societies.
In addition to participating in a large number of public meetings, the APT US team has also hosted its own events. These includes asset improvement workshops for unconventional plays in both Forth Worth and Midland, Texas with the next workshop scheduled to take place on October 7th in Houston, Texas.
APT also helped fund a trip to the International Conference and Exhibition Cartagena 2022 for geochemistry student Gabriel Wilkinson. This is part of APT’s is commitment to supporting societies, events, students and operators right across the Americas.
“We want to help create platforms for sharing of best practice, exchange ideas and knowledge. We also want to be an ambassador for driving transparency and change. Simply because we believe this is the way forward to make exploration and production of oil and gas more cost-efficient and sustainable,” says Craig D. Barrie.
US projects
While sharing of knowledge is an unpaid exercise, APT’s US team obviously also supports operators in a commercial capacity. During the past year, several operators have engaged the team for both conventional and unconventional projects across North America. These projects have ranged from bread and butter analytical and fluid typing projects, county and regional correlation studies through to production allocation evaluations, with much of the focus, unsurprisingly, being in the Permian Basin. Additionally, APT’s global teaming partnership with SGS, entered into in July 2021, has resulted in considerable analytical and consulting collaboration across the companies energy focused teams.
APT Allomon and Girasol
The door opener to many of APT’s project discussions and resulting projects in the USA has been two of the company’s specially designed solutions, APT Allomon and APT Girasol.
APT Allomon (Allocation & Monitoring) is an integrated workflow and software package developed to facilitate landing, production and completion optimization by identifying, effective drainage zones, networks and contributions and thereby ensuring effective and economic production from shale oil fields, while also reducing CAPEX, OPEX and DRILLEX. APT Girasol (Gas Interpretation Reservoir Analysis Software) is a mud gas display, processing and interpretation software package that is designed to extract more value from gas logs, specifically around pay and phase distribution and GOR estimates.
“The enthusiasm for both APT Allomon and Girasol stems largely from the transparency and accessibility these solutions offer operators. Our approaches are based upon operators’ specific objectives and so we ensure value from start to finish with all of the deliverables being accessible and understandable. It is this openness and transparency which has been crucial to our success,” adds Craig D. Barrie.
Applied Petroleum Technology provides geochemical and biostratigraphic laboratory services, basin modelling and petroleum systems analysis to operators worldwide. The company is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, and has additional offices in the UK, USA and Canada.