Abstract
During the last decades, upstream oil and gas industry have faced tremendous improvement due to the availability of continuous technology advances. However, there are still challenges to implement effective technology and talent management programs to tap into growth opportunities from subsurface resources in an effective manner. A successfully deployed game-changing innovation methodology embraces three main areas: discovering major key business opportunities, empowering a leader and a high-performance team focused on innovative solutions, and reengineering the business units to catalyze an agile innovation process.
Case studies from two fields located in Llanos Basin, Colombia, are presented to illustrate the power of these processes in boosting value creation with innovation. Experimentation, prototyping, and deployment of innovative technology, as well as processes and organizational initiatives, led to significant increases in production, reduction of capital and lifting costs, and reserves addition by increased recovery efficiency in a relative shorter cycle time. Furthermore, the excellent results gave way to business culture transformation in terms of new ways of collaborative work in E&P, effective knowledge sharing practices, and focused, high-return, R&D programs.
This systemic and agile approach is continuously expanding with the access to a network of extended workforces beyond the typical asset organizations, such in-company Technical Centers, specialized consultancy firms and Universities, as well as focused alliances with integrated service companies. In addition, it is essential to select and develop innovation leaders with the capabilities to mobilize the network of domain experts focused on solving complex problems, to coordinate provision of resources, to liaise with executive champions, and to communicate relentless about the business value of the early wins, and draft a strategic roadmap for full field deployment.
It is considered that the innovation management approach presented in this paper can be adapted to fulfill needs of assets worldwide.
