ABSTRACT of Presentation

Regardless of oil price, large joint venture upstream projects have significantly underperformed on cost, schedule and production.  Smaller upstream projects have not fared much better. While there are a number of good books that go into some detail on reasoning focused principally on project management, poor decision quality played a very significant role in the underperformance.

Therefore, a group of experienced subject matter experts (SME's) from across the oil & gas industry worked collaboratively to develop a joint technical report focused on good decision quality. Additional industry input was obtained from a discussion session at SPE’s Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in September 2015. The resulting technical report provides practical advice on the application of decision quality principles, which apply during all phases of a project’s life cycle, including exploration, development, and operational phases.

The group of SME's focused on “decision quality” as defined by the Society of Decision Professionals (SDP) in terms of a Decision Makers’ Bill of Rights. The focus of this report is on gaining alignment as much as understanding differences of the participants regarding the opportunity, alternatives, information, values, trade-offs, logical analysis and commitment to action.

Both SPE and SDP sponsored this effort requiring numerous meetings of the SME's to get to agreement.  Both SPE & SDP believe this technical report to contain very valuable information that should be shared broadly with our communities.