Decision-Making Model for Facility Management Prioritization and Optimization in Oil and Gas Service Companies

Abstract

Today’s oil and gas industry finds itself in the deepest financial crisis on record, with profitability and cash flow at unsustainable levels for most oil and gas operators which in turn has created an equally dramatic situation for the service companies. To deal with these issues, services companies have implemented plans to reduce cost, improve maintenance efficiency, productivity and increase asset availability through what is known as asset management. In this study the focus was placed into the asset class related facilities and real estate. As part of the coordinated activities to manage assets, organizations must make decisions which affect the state of their assets for each of the lifecycle stages. Taking decision in facility management have been identified as a major challenge due to the lack of systematic approaches that can be used in the decision-making process. This study seek to develop a decision-making model for facilities management within oilfield service companies as a main objective. In order to achieve this goal, five sub objectives were proposed, looking into: discuss the current situation and related problems, define and discuss possible options/solutions, establish a model to discriminate among possible options, define decision-making criteria and assess how the possible options fulfil/align with the criteria and apply the model to find the best alternative for asset optimization. The study case was limited to the facilities used by Schlumberger Wireline in Venezuela. The thesis was divided into five chapters namely: introduction and background information, literature review, case study and implementation on the decision model, discussion and conclusions and recommendations for future research.