Espuela Gets It Done With ComboCurve: Evaluating A Big Opportunity in a Short Timeframe
Industry : Reserves Auditor
Solution : ComboCore
See how your team can go from forecast to economics in minutes with energy’s fastest analysis engine.
In the oilfield, making a bid on new wells is like playing poker. Even when you know you have a good hand, your opponent’s chip stack size can be just as much of a deterrent as the cards they hold. The only way to compete in those moments is to bet big when you know you have the best hand, and that requires accurate analysis as rapidly as possible. Espuela Energy LLC had an opportunity to bid on a massive play but was short on time and people to complete the evaluation. They needed to bet big, but to do so, they needed to know how strong their hand was. They needed an ace up their sleeve. With ComboCurve, they managed to turn what would have previously taken a week into a weekend. In this blog, we examine why they were able to accomplish this and what it means for their competitiveness in pursuing future opportunities against major producers.
When Opportunity Comes Knocking
Espuela Energy LLC is a lean energy company that leverages experience and expertise, rather than size, to expand its holdings and increase its ROI. To better evaluate opportunities and acquire new properties, they recently partnered with ComboCurve to improve the speed at which they can assess and act on available leases that come across their desks. Recently, during their onboarding and training period with ComboCurve, one of these opportunities piqued their interest: 186 PDP wells and more than 500 undeveloped locations.
But there was a significant challenge: the deal was set to close in only three days. With six unique type curve areas, each with six of their own unique landing zones, that meant a total of 36 unique type curve forecasts would be required. That sort of review would typically take weeks.
New to the ComboCurve offerings and with a limited headcount of one engineer, Espuela saw the opportunity to put our product to the test. They soon realized that, by helping them spend less time uploading and more time evaluating, their investment in ComboCurve was money well spent.
Data Input in Hours Instead of Days
When an opportunity comes in on a Friday, and you only have until Monday to evaluate the deal, you’d better know what you are doing. Luckily, Espuela had already completed the onboarding and training to learn the software and was familiar with uploading seller-side databases and performing forecasting and economic analysis for multiple properties. When the opportunity hit their desk on a Friday, Espuela quickly went to work on uploading data because their experience had taught them this could be a time-consuming part of the process. Typically, this sort of data input could take weeks without the assistance of a large crew of engineers to sort, sift, clean, and organize it. However, their expectations changed when they saw how easy and efficient it was to upload data. There weren’t the typical minute, monotonous input errors to clear and rectify. The frustration level for this process was nonexistent with ComboCurve compared to other available models in the industry.
What would typically take days to input in other systems was being done in mere hours with ComboCurve. The speed at which the data is processed directly translates into more time available to evaluate the opportunity and craft the offer, which are the most critical parts of any pursuit of new leases and can significantly influence the outcome. By the time the weekend was over, Espuela had entered the data and evaluated the opportunity, so they could spend their final day reviewing the offer they needed to make.
Levels the Playing Field for Lean Teams
For players like Espuela, what ComboCurve offers is the opportunity to play at the same level as majors when it comes to the pursuit of available assets. They can tackle the same level of data analysis with a much smaller workforce and feel confident enough in the accuracy of the output data to be aggressive and match or exceed what a larger player may be willing to commit to.
Espuela was able to effectively evaluate this opportunity and submit a bid because ComboCurve’s software provided the ease of input and the power of analysis that could not have been achieved using traditional evaluation methods. They confirmed that this deal could not have been reviewed in such a short timeframe without the benefit of their use of ComboCurve.