Chesapeake Energy Besieged with Lease Compliance Issues
Oil and gas companies often struggle with the vast amounts of information inherent in day to day business. We took notice last week of an article in The Examiner reporting that in Pennsylvania, Chesapeake Energy is losing “its hold as the market leader within the state,” as it reduces drilling by more than half this year. The company has of late been selling off shale gas assets to meet debt obligations, and they say drilling reductions are due to low prices for natural gas. Meanwhile, the company is facing “allegations of price fixing in Michigan while increasingly besieged with landowner lawsuit claims of underpayment of gas royalties and related leasehold disputes,” and these data issues more than likely are contributing factors to their declining market position.
Unclear data and reporting has popped up more recently in Pennsylvania for Chesapeake Energy, The Examiner reports. According to state officials, Chesapeake submitted a production report to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection that was filled with errors. “This caused great confusion within the state regarding actual production and has called into question oversights as to how accurate such production data might be.”
Neil Duffin says Regulatory Compliance “More Important than Ever”
ExxonMobil Development Company President Neil Duffin spoke at the Rice E&C forum this evening in Houston, Texas, focusing on managing today’s changing regulatory environment and choosing oilfield service companies who share Exxon’s commitment to regulatory compliance.
Duffin noted that while the number of incidents of non-compliance have decreased, the number of high-consequence incidents were alarmingly high and “eye-opening” for his executive team. Because there is a huge gap between the field and the corner office, the executives were shocked when they took a look into the quantitative information around these risk scenarios. He believes that if the energy industry really examines the small number of truly high-consequence activities, and mitigates the risk of such consequences, Oil and Gas can elevate itself as an industry.
Risk Mitigation Through Technology
Risks are a part of daily life in the oil and gas industry. And because they are many, varied and unpredictable, software product companies cannot keep up with industry needs. We specialize in creating custom business solutions that respond to changes impacting the Oil and Gas industry long before anyone else comes to the table. We like to think that preparation, visibility, and communication are vital to mitigating risk – and are all aspects that can be improved with good data.
Are you prepared? Our client is!
Award-winning Software Development!
We’re proud to say that our Royalty Compliance project team has been given an award for their performance developing a critical system for one of our Upstream Oil and Gas clients. The complex system of lease jeopardy mitigation software has been a major company-wide strategic effort for our client. And our contribution has not only accomplished the initial goal, but in doing so has set up a centralized system based on 5 databases that synchronizes information across departments, sends notifications when action needs to be taken, and generates daily status reports. We’ll be talking more about the benefits of keeping everyone on the same page in the upcoming weeks!
For now – Hooray it’s Friday! Check out our award! And if you’re curious, we just blogged about the project!