Case Study: PowerTools® Empowers O&G Consultant to Perform Rapid, Comprehensive Acquisition Analysis

Company Profile
Clair Opsal, president of Opsal Energy, Inc., is a petroleum consultant and a registered professional petroleum engineer in Texas. He consults with small to mid-size oil and gas companies who are looking to acquire either non-operated or operated oil and gas interests throughout the United States. Opsal performs detailed analyses of potential reserves to help clients decide whether to acquire an interest, whether to conduct further evaluation of an individual property, or to determine the forecasted return rate of a proposed drilling site. As a more than 30-year veteran of the oil and gas industry, Opsal has worked with IHS's data, products and services throughout his career.

Business Challenge
To support his clients, Clair Opsal must analyze individual properties or large groups of properties quickly and accurately - ultimately to enable his clients to make rapid decisions or seize opportunities. He needs an economics and reservoir analysis tool for assessing multiple properties efficiently and accurately. Primarily, he looks for software that is powerful, yet easy to use, and that will smoothly interface with a variety of different data sources. Additionally, he requires a mapping feature that allows him to bypass the time-consuming manual mapping he has performed in the past. And as an independent consultant, he needs a program priced with the single user in mind.

The IHS U.S. PowerTools Advantage
When Opsal launched his consulting business in 1999, he began using PowerTools, Windows®-based economics and reservoir analysis software from IHS. He began with a six-month Relief Plan, which enabled Opsal to take advantage of PowerTools at a significant discount. IHS designed the plan to provide a complete copy of PowerTools, and all the associated map data, to oil and gas professionals that may have been displaced due to continuous changes in the industry.

Since then, Opsal has used PowerTools continuously and relies on the software as his primary method of reservoir and economics analysis. With the software, Opsal can input IHS well and production data, as well as data from different sources, to create preliminary output. He can show clients declines, cash flow, price sensitivities and detailed maps. He regularly runs a variety of what-if scenarios by changing factors such as price, escalation rates and timeframes. As a result, he can give clients a clearer picture of the potential highs and lows of specific wells. Most importantly, the software's ease of use gives him the efficiency he needs for quick evaluations.

"PowerTools allows me to look at an acquisition and, with speed and accuracy, say that it fits or doesn't fit, and decide whether to take it to the next level of analysis," Opsal explained. "It enables my clients to know very quickly whether they want to pursue a property or not."

"PowerTools allows me to look at an acquisition and, with speed and accuracy, say that it fits or doesn't fit, and decide whether to take it to the next level of analysis. It enables my clients to know very quickly whether they want to pursue a property or not."

— Clair Opsal, President, Opsal Energy, Inc.

Though PowerTools also offers the option of simultaneously using three methods of estimating reserves - decline curve analysis, material balance or volumetrics - Opsal typically relies on the decline curve method, along with P over Z plots, because he usually evaluates older reservoirs where the decline curve is established.

Whereas mapping data was historically a manual, laborious process, PowerTools has dramatically simplified the process for Opsal, allowing him to create maps narrowed down to one well or a group of wells under consideration, and even display nearby offset wells.

"I create maps in minutes," he explained. "Presenting to clients and prospects while using basic maps for location context and bubble maps to talk about recoveries and reserves gives me powerful visual support to explain engineering findings to non-engineers."

One of the newer PowerTools mapping features allows Opsal to pinpoint the exact geographic location of wells, based on an API number. This is particularly valuable for wells in Texas, where the lack of specific range identifiers previously required him to spend, at times, hours trying to determine just the region of Texas where a well is located.

PowerTools is also particularly valuable in situations where Opsal must assess a large group of wells. In two separate projects, his clients asked him to evaluate reserves on their existing properties - approximately 150 properties for one client and about 200 for the other. He could input his clients' specific parameters in regards to pricing and escalations to create detailed forecasts and then compile the information into reports that his clients could use for future reference. Though the projects lasted several weeks, Opsal believes that PowerTools allowed him to evaluate five to 10 times more wells in that timeframe than would have been possible otherwise.

Opsal also appreciates the ability to import data from other sources, a capability he uses when clients provide their existing data files in other formats. He can upload the data into PowerTools and pick up the analysis from there - eliminating the need for manual data input. Additionally, when exchanging files with other PowerTools users, he can annotate sections of the data to explain various changes in production.

Opsal regularly uses existing reports or easily builds customized reports to determine factors such as annual cash flow. He credits the IHS Support department for being there to answer specific questions about the software, and in one case helping him build a report to perform internal sorting of properties.

With the flexibility to evaluate various scenarios with PowerTools, Opsal can focus on analysis rather than number-crunching. For him, that means that he and his clients can make decisions more quickly and with more confidence.

"I work with PowerTools and IHS data on a daily basis," he said. "The quality of the products and services I consistently receive from IHS allow me to spend my time on evaluations - not on processing facts and figures."

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