Onshore Oil & Gas Transformation

About Maverick Natural Resources

At IFS Unleashed in October, I was honored to be joined by one of our newest onshore oil & natural gas customers, Maverick Natural Resources in a break-out best practice session. Maverick’s success is due, in part, to the focus of Ultimo’s implementation partner MaxGrip, who led a great project to support our joint client’s objectives. Senior Facilities Engineer, Patrick Kester presented on the company’s innovative approach to adding a best of breed enterprise asset management (EAM) to its tech landscape. It represents a major shift in how onshore oil & gas companies are investing to modernize their operations and becoming the most sustainable versions of themselves. 

In a bid to revolutionize their operations, oil & gas leaders are actively pursuing solutions to digitize their systems of record, including asset management. This strategic shift promises not only increased uptime and improved decision-making power but also fosters better collaboration and visibility across their assets. 

Maverick Natural Resources (Maverick) is a results-driven, private oil and natural gas company with a strong focus on assets in Texas and Oklahoma in the USA. Working with Ultimo this year, the company has achieved four important things: –   

1. The digitization of oil field assets. By digitizing assets through its entire operations Maverick is able to enhance revenue certainty, and create a foundation for asset visibility across its whole value chain  

2. Modernization. Ultimo’s EAM solution is bringing Maverick’s operations up to date. It has entered the early stages of the EAM maturity model and is optimizing its maintenance processes. Through better data management, the natural resources company is creating a pathway to predictive and preventative maintenance 

3. Enhanced sustainability. Improved decision making enables Maverick to better manage risk and reduce its carbon footprint 

4. Quickly reduced maintenance costs. Like many Ultimo customers, its time to EAM value was rapid. Just over seven months in fact. 

Patrick explains, “The process was quick. We started the conversation in early 2024, and by July of the same year we had implemented Ultimo EAM across all the locations in our largest field in Oklahoma. That represents over 1,000 facilities, compressor stations, and gas plants.” 

“We were looking at how can we improve what we’re doing across all our facilities, from construction, electrical and automation to rotating equipment,” continues Patrick. “We had several spreadsheets containing asset data – what equipment was at which location. But none of it was digitized, logged, tracked or managed in a single place where everyone in the company could see it. So, we knew we wanted a centralized database to facilitate the eventual adoption of technologies such as machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to mature our EAM strategy towards predictive maintenance. Or in Maverick’s case, to extended maintenance out so we’re not just doing what manufacturer recommends, we’re doing what’s best for our people, the equipment, and the company’s pocketbook.” 

With a large and diversified asset base providing production optionality and development potential, Maverick is competitively positioned in some of North America’s leading oil and gas plays. The success of its ongoing portfolio optimization strategy fuels Maverick’s ability to seize new organic growth opportunities. And I for one, have been impressed by the company’s ability to articulate its focus on organizational goals, and work with Ultimo to create a pathway of incremental steps towards the EAM progress that supports those targets. 

The journey towards AI 

When we think about AI, we know we need good data. Maverick has begun the journey but making its data more actionable. 

“For us, that was really about that data being entered where people can see it and use it,” explains Patrick. “The starting point then is really about a work order system that can track the jobs that people were doing at each site on each piece of equipment. We’re not getting down to every wire connected to every transducer, but maybe on every separator we can track the transducers.” 

“We started small by tracking what we’re doing, with a focus on two KPIs. First, how long does it take us to do a job from when a work order is submitted, and second, are we diagnosing it properly from the offset, and how can we improve on that.” 

“Ultimo gives us that,” claims Patrick. “The EAM shows us; here are your inputs, and here’s how we log that time automatically. Dashboard-wise, every month we can see how long it takes to do certain activities, for example in automation, rotating or electrical equipment. In construction also, how many misdiagnoses have we had in each piece of equipment.” 

Mobile and efficiency work planning 

Like many industrial businesses, Maverick is affected by skills, labor and people resource scarcity. So, in addition to achieving the operational efficiency, it looked to its EAM to assist with work planning, scheduling people resources, optimizing its skilled labour, and managing the inventory that supports maintenance. The company drilled down to how maintenance activity is actually done.  

“The Ultimo mobile platform was huge for us,” explains Patrick. “Having our mechanics and technicians spend all their time in front of computer is not what we want. We want them on the ground doing maintenance work, and reporting back what they did.” 

By having offline mobile capabilities in Ultimo the technicians can more reliability and quickly update job plans and complete work – enabling them to move on to the next work order. Which saves time and reduces cost. 

“In the hills and valleys of western Oklahoma, there are many cell reception dead spots. Ultimo’s offline mobile functionality allows our maintenance teams to download jobs to their phone and use voice to text. Now, end of shift reports that used to take someone 5-10 minutes to complete take just a few seconds,” Patrick continues. 

Benefits for all 

Technician feedback has been positive. They are saving time and working more efficiently. Patrick concludes, “Whenever there’s new software in an organization, there’s potential for resistance. We went through it with everyone in the facilities chain – to understand how they do their jobs and how the work order system could improve it. We wanted to get them excited about being more efficient. After all, the time savings can mean looking at more wells in a day, and making our company more successful, which can translate into greater job satisfaction as well as personal bonuses and rewards.”