The Thales Energy team conducts ongoing research in the areas of oil and gas economics, global fiscal terms, modern decision analysis applications in upstream, portfolio optimization, and cloud-based applications. All of this research is incorporated into Thales Energy product suite.
Global Fiscal Regime
The Thales Energy team has years of experience in international oil and gas project economics and global fiscal regimes, including PSC, Royalty, Service contract, Buy back, and special type contracts. Thales Energy has studied and tracks over 140 oil and gas producing countries’ petroleum fiscal terms. This research is reflected in the PIMAS Global Model Library (GML) which is continually updated. Clients are able to easily access and modify the model(s) contracts of a “country of interest” and make quick economic evaluations.
Modern Decision Analysis in Oil & Gas Industry
Traditional upstream project economics evaluations focus on the value and the volume of a project, e.g. NPV, IRR and entitlement production/reserves to various stake holders. However, the evaluation of inherent risks and scenarios has become increasingly important. Expected mean value and decision tree based approaches are no longer sufficient in corporate decision making. Thales incorporates modern decision analysis approaches like S-curve, Monte Carlo simulation, VOI theory etc. into the Thales suite of products in a cloud based platform.
Economics Evaluation for Different Asset Types
Oil and gas upstream projects and assets are wide ranging in terms of scale, costs, operating environment, and reservoir type, e.g. conventional oil and gas, unconventional shale or tight oil and gas, heavy oil, oil sands, deep water, etc. This wide range of oil and gas asset types requires different methodologies and approaches, and a suite of tools which allow for not only the evaluation of an individual asset, but a portfolio of assets.
Asset Management and Portfolio Optimization
The evaluation of a portfolio of assets is completely different from the single asset evaluation. Multiple objective optimization theories and algorithms are the basis for portfolio optimization. However, not all optimization approaches are applicable to a portfolio of oil and gas assets and the application of these approaches requires a deep understanding the oil and gas industry's requirements.
Thales Energy’s suite of products provides applications for asset management and corporate planning. Our research is incorporated into our asset portfolio optimization approach to better facilitate corporate decision-making.
Cloud-based Application
SaaS (Software as a service) and Cloud based applications are used to varying degrees in oil and gas industry. However, in an industry where cost savings and efficiency are always paramount, cloud based solutions offer distinct advantages.
Cloud-based applications can be deployed with greater efficiency at a much lower cost. More importantly, people from different disciplines can collaborate on a single cloud-based platform with greater efficiency.