Sand Hill Petroleum Improves Collaboration

Sand Hill Petroleum BV purchased its first exploration licence in Hungary from RAG Austria in early 2013. During the following years the company participated in the Hungarian exploration concession bid rounds and won 9 licences. In these areas the company drilled over 40 exploration wells and starting from zero, its natural gas production now represents about 20-25% of the Hungarian domestic production. In 2016 Sand Hill agreed with MOL
to acquire a majority stake in its Romanian EX-1 and EX-5 exploration licences, where the company is currently shooting the largest CEE region onshore 3D seismic and has already drilled an exploration well in 2018.

Sand Hill used an Excel model for financial evaluation of its portfolio. As their portfolio grew, Excel no longer met their needs. They wanted a solution which would allow them to benefit from a database for user management and data security but without compromising on modelling flexibility. An ability to build risked scenarios and gain an insight into forecasted capital expenditure was also important as was the functionality to create and manage the timeline of drilling plan scenarios. Creating production forecasts in Excel was proving to be a complex process, they wanted a solution where production curves could be manipulated relatively quickly, and if needed aggregated production curves could be analyzed by area, timing, etc.

The Challenge

Sand Hill Petroleum BV is a Dutch-registered private equity-financed oil and gas exploration and production company set up in 2012. It purchased its first exploration licence in Hungary from RAG Austria in early 2013.

Initially, Sand Hill used an Excel model for the financial evaluation of its portfolio but as their company grew in size and complexity, Excel struggled and they wanted a solution which provided modelling flexibility as well as database security and standardization. Aucerna’s esi.manage provides a powerful
solution for fiscal modelling and data management.

“It would be impossible to do all the different analysis we are doing now with esi.manage in Excel. It improves collaboration and saves time by making it possible to work in parallel with other analysts on the same dataset.” – József Takács, Senior Business Advisor, Sand Hill Petroleum

The Results

Value adding analysis – Generating multiple risked scenarios allows Sand Hill to model and compare options to quickly assess the impact of changes to their plan. Analysts can create custom value-based key performance metrics to confidently select the best path forward.

Transparent fiscal modelling – Sand Hill’s users can build and modify fiscal terms with ease to understand the effect of fiscal changes on their assets and portfolio.

Sand Hill evaluated multiple vendors and solutions assessing their ability to meet key criteria which included cost and support alongside user interface, analytical capability and portfolio management functionality. Aucerna and esi.manage were selected not only because they ranked top on all these requirements but also because Sand Hill appreciated the benefits of working with a partner dedicated to delivering asset, financial and portfolio planning solutions for E&P companies in terms of development effort and focus.

Efficient Deployment

After one week of comprehensive esi.manage training, the Sand Hill users were able to build their skills and capability to enable them not only to use the software correctly, but also to understand how best to deploy it to meet their needs. The Sand Hill users then led the software implementation, building and validating their own fiscal models, uploading and connecting data sets and creating custom reports.

Scalability and Flexibility

As Sand Hill has grown, new users and functions have been added to the initial implementation and the esi-manage platform has evolved to support the growing user base. Sand Hill’s portfolio of assets has also become more diverse and complex. As esi.manage is a transparent modelling solution, Sand Hill can analyse the impact of potential small changes in fiscal terms across their growing asset base quickly and easily.

Collaboration

The esi.manage platform has improved collaboration across functions and teams by providing Sand Hill’s analysts with access to the data they need when they need it. The centralized database allows for real-time project updates and better communication across the whole company. The net effect is increased efficiency and reduced operational costs associated with manual data tracking, as well as higher employee engagement.