Red Wolf Natural Resources (Red Wolf) is a great example of the new breed of energy companies who continuously aspire to low-cost operations while growing with a lean team. To do that, Red Wolf is cutting out the middleman in the field, automating data streams, and empowering their pumpers to focus on proactive maintenance and production optimization. Field tickets are one way they are attacking the problem.
Inspiration for Change
Based in OKC, Red Wolf operates approximately 200 wells across the SCOOP/STACK/Merge. Like many producers, the company’s 7 pumpers struggled with the pervasive paper run ticket challenge. Physical tickets required field staff to stick to a set well route every day in order to retrieve oil tickets from an onsite lease box or receive tickets directly from the hauler. As an example, a well that produces 1,000 barrels per day requires 5 hauls per day or more than 160 per month.
Red Wolf’s wells produce thousands of tickets per month, requiring field staff to continuously retrieve and manually key-in oil haul details. Seasoned pumpers can input ticket details in a couple of minutes into their mobile field data capture system – open gauge, close gauge, gravity, BS&W, seals, etc. – but the time adds up, not to mention the constant distraction. It’s a digital paper shuffle that keeps so many pumpers from their primary job.
What the Solution Looks Like
As part of its strategy to eliminate manual processes and empower its staff to focus on improving production, Red Wolf is automating data flows wherever possible, such as feeding more than 80% of gross production directly into its field data capture solution. The goal: bring scattered or disconnected field operations data together for rapid analysis and prioritization of the wells that need first attention vs. waiting on field staff to get to a problem on their well route.
Red Wolf also wanted to automate the import of oil ticket data, cut out the middleman/ticket in the field, and deliver oil hauls directly into its database. Because most hauling services now manage oil ticket data through mobile field ticketing solutions, the data is already being managed yet, ironically, for many producers, paper oil tickets require pumpers to rekey the same data that was just recorded by the hauler.
Stepping in to Solve the Problem
Red Wolf turned to PDS Energy’s E-Ticket Data Exchange, a reciprocal data sharing service between haulers and producers. The E-Ticket Exchange offered Red Wolf pre-built integrations directly into the electronic ticketing databases for dozens of hauling services.
Energy Transfer, one of Red Wolf’s haulers, is already a participant in the E-Ticket Exchange, which allowed the producer to rapidly get up and running with the hauler’s oil ticket data. PDS Energy quickly worked with the operator’s other hauler, an in-basin service, to integrate their commercial electronic ticketing solution, finally enabling Red Wolf to import all of its oil tickets several times per day and take pumpers out of the loop.
Business Results and Next Steps
PDS Energy’s E-Ticket Exchange is enabling Red Wolf to completely eliminate oil ticket data entry from its two crude haulers. As a result, its pumpers spend more of their time on high value field work, repair, and proactive optimization of the company’s producing assets.
“The E-Ticket Exchange has been one of the biggest game changers we have used this year – so far, this system has been amazing for us and as Red Wolf grows will be vital to being a low-cost operator,” says Marshall Hall, the petroleum engineer at Red Wolf who is spearheading the producer’s digital oilfield transformation strategy.
Following on the success of integrating oil ticket data, Red Wolf is turning next to produced water where it will leverage PDS Energy’s E-Ticket Exchange to automate water ticket delivery.
