Efficiency in Field Development Now More Needed Than Ever

Q: What are the most important projects and opportunities that Cayros Group is pursuing in 2020?

A: First and foremost, we want to continue developing an effective platform. We want to support collaboration through strategic alliances to help companies grow sustainably and through a diverse investment portfolio. We want to promote transparency in management and also the industry’s best practices in terms of community engagement and technological quality.

Throughout 2020, we are pursuing two opportunities, one with PEMEX and another with IMP, and we will continue to provide specialized consultancy services to specific exploration and production projects. We want to help these institutions and operators implement integrated tools and solutions that can help them maintain innovation. Our main focus in terms of our technologies continues to be our C-Fields software, which we are working on. That is really the main item in our agenda for 2020. 

Q: How is Mexico’s position in Cayros Group’s global portfolio evolving?   

A: Given the unique situation that the world and Mexico are facing, Cayros Group has partnered with its strategic alliances in the public and private sectors to strengthen its position in Mexico. As long as the studies we perform for our clients in Mexico help to increase their fields’ productivity, mitigating their risk and leading them to reevaluate their business plans in positive ways, we can make sure that Mexico continues to be of great importance in Cayros’ global portfolio. Low oil prices have definitely made us look for new opportunities in Northern Africa and the Middle East. Nevertheless, this has not represented a decrease in activity or attention at our Mexican operations. As a matter of fact, we have not reduced our number of Mexican personnel and we do not plan to.

Q: What role will Cayros Group play in the ongoing recovery of the global oil and gas industry from these dual crises? 

A: We follow the best examples when implementing protocols to protect our workforce from exposure to COVID-19. In this new context, we are perceiving a decrease in demand for specialized technical consultancy services across the entire energy sector given budget cuts as a result of the crises. This situation limits the availability of resources destined to new projects. This is why our Ciudad del Carmen operational team has been dedicating their time to optimizing technological tools that we believe can play an important part in what comes next for companies once the crisis is over. We believe this will make us enormously competitive in the industry context that is to come.

Q: How are you planning to connect with private operators entering their field development phases?

A: We have had several meetings and approaches with significant players in the private sector. Unfortunately, this is not currently the best moment to give a final answer to that question, since a lot of these interactions and conversations with private operators have had to be paused for the time being given the market situation. However, the interest in our tools is quite high, and we can expect to see that translate into increased demand toward the end of the year. They have some concerns, for example regarding our data management, but we have demonstrated to them that our business with PEMEX and other public players has complied with the highest security and confidentiality industry standards through which their data is handled. This includes data delivered to CNH.

Q: What questions from PEMEX and other operators have you had to answer regarding your tools, such as the C-Fields software?

A: PEMEX has welcomed our technology because they have had great results using it. PEMEX is approached by many data technology companies, but our tool is unique and of great use to them because its main focus is the effective integration and development of data rather than simply data generation, analysis or evaluation. We do not know of a tool that can perform these functions in a manner similar to C-Fields and that can address so many segments of upstream operation, ranging from facility maintenance to production drilling. That gives us a significant advantage. It also helped that we worked extensively with IMP on the successful reconfiguration of production methodologies for Cantarell.

Q: Which of your projects would you consider to be the best illustration of your abilities and capacities?

A: We are working on another project in collaboration with PEMEX and IMP, focused on shallow-water fields. We are developing secondary recovery systems through a FEED (Front-End Engineering Design) methodology to focus our analysis on economically feasible models for the exploitation of these fields that produce ultra-heavy crude, which represents an enormous technological challenge. The choice and development of new offshore separation, dehydration and desalination technologies will be crucial here, especially since they will have to be integrated into a secondary recovery system with possible water injection capabilities. In this case, there is the possibility of designing an ultra-efficient closed-circuit system. We are hoping that in two months we will present a more solid version of this project that can illustrate the economic value for our clients.     

Cayros Group is an independent firm specialized in services and technical support for the oil and gas exploration and production industry. It focuses on field development planning and optimization, exploration and reservoir characterization.