With competition for investment dollars tightening since 2008, new U.S. SEC reporting regulations in 2009 and unconventional plays invigorating the industry, the accuracy and effectiveness of reserves evaluations, reserves management, forecasting, risk analysis, budgeting and reporting have never been more important.
The team behind Value Navigator, one of the most widely used engineering and evaluation software tools in the Canadian oil and gas community, recognized these trends early on and began a multi-year redesign of its comprehensive tool to meet the new industry reality.
Value Navigator 6.0 was launched this week at an industry luncheon in Calgary. With more than 30 new or improved features, including support for SQL Server and SQLite data management, it is the most comprehensive update ever to this 12-year-old oil and gas evaluation software.
"Value Navigator has always been the most accurate evaluation and reserves management tool on the Canadian market," said Boyd Russell, Energy Navigator president. "In addition, our workflow has been designed by following the logical progression of tasks so it eliminates missed steps, allows the user to work intuitively, improves daily productivity and gives the reserves manager a more complete day to day picture."
"Dramatic improvements in technologies in well design, completion techniques, drilling efficiencies et cetera have been accelerating over the last 15 years," continued Russell. "Workflows for unconventional evaluations have not kept pace. We recognized that industry professionals needed better methods for greater accuracy and efficiency to improve the bottom line. With ValNav 6.0, Energy Navigator has upped the ante by incorporating a whole new approach to decline analysis, plus type curve and cross plot capabilities that will allow users to pinpoint opportunities like never before."
Russell added that ValNav 6 was designed to be a truly international tool with multi-currency capability for seamless evaluation and management of properties and projects across many jurisdictions. North American reporting standards are fast being adopted worldwide and ValNav 6 is designed with both Canadian NI 51-101 and U.S. SEC regulations in mind. It keeps a meticulous record of all changes made to all entities within a project so auditing and reporting are simple and complete.
Efficiency and speed have always been a hallmark of the Value Navigator suite. Initial benchmarking of the new version has produced some of the industry's fastest batch processing times-meaning ValNav users will be able to work faster and get more done in the day.
With new automatic forecasting that is accurate more than 95 per cent of the time, ValNav users will benefit from improved productivity. Type wells can be created quickly without the defects that are prevalent with industry standard methods. Unmanageably large regional studies can be completed easily. Literally dozens of other improvements throughout the tool add to an overall improved and efficient user experience.
Energy Navigator develops software solutions that help more than 300 oil and gas companies make better decisions. Value Navigator and AFE Navigator provide efficient control and accountability for reserves evaluation, production, cash flow forecasting and capital cost management, ultimately assisting users in performing their jobs with the utmost speed and accuracy. Energy Navigator focuses on creating workflow solutions that enable the effective management of capital and reserve assets, helping companies to reach their full potential. The company's open philosophy and architecture design promotes workflow integration with other leading industry software.