Streamlining oil and gas technology offerings to benefit Africa

An alliance between global enterprise resource planning (ERP) leader, SAP AG and Landmark Graphics Corp, leading provider of integrated exploration, drilling, production and data management solutions, will benefit Africa`s exploration and production of oil.

The two companies have agreed to streamline their production operations, production allocation, and revenue and gas plant accounting products, which will integrate the upstream operational and accounting functionality needed to create higher levels of efficiencies and reduced costs.

According to Arjen van de Voort, product manager: Oil & Gas at SAP Southern Africa, the alliance is of great significance to Africa, as exploration of the production of oil is strongest in countries such as Nigeria, Angola and Gabon. "The encouraging results of the Nigerian elections has been a great influence on the re-investment of international oil companies, such as Shell, which plans to invest $8.5 billion over the next five years in the development of offshore oil fields. The proposal is the largest industrial investment ever in sub-Saharan Africa," he explains.

"This highlights the importance of the alliance for Africa as the new solution will close the gap between business and technology experienced until now by companies in the business of exploration."

A seamless business application programming interface (BAPI) between Landmark Graphics` The Oilfield Workstation (TOW/cs) production allocation software system and the SAP Oil & Gas Solution for Exploration & Production will be available in early 2000.

Dieter Rafalsky, vice president and general manager for the Oil & Gas Industry Business Unit at SAP AG, says: "We are extremely pleased to collaborate with Landmark Graphics in the development of our new exploration and production solution. TOW/cs will offer our customers a robust field data capture and daily allocation engine that will be seamlessly integrated with our monthly production allocation and revenue accounting functionality."

Robert P. Peebler, Landmark president and CEO, says: "Linking the production data management expertise of Landmark with the financial and supply chain logistics expertise of SAP offers our customers a strong new value proposition. This agreement is the first in a series of strategic alliances between Landmark and SAP that will leverage the powerful functionality of the SAP R/3 System with the Landmark Graphics` proven suite of geoscience, drilling and engineering solutions."

SAP and Landmark Graphics are also two of the founding members of COM for Energy (http://www.com4energy.com), a new nonprofit industry initiative to improve exploration and production business performance on an enterprise scale by accelerating technical and business process integration.

The SAP Oil & Gas solution currently supports upstream and downstream requirements including joint venture accounting, marketing and refining, bulk transportation management, exchange handling, commodity-based pricing, and service station retailing.

The new enhanced SAP Oil & Gas Solution for Exploration & Production will be delivered in components, enabling customers to quickly take advantage of the following new functionality as it is available. These include:

Operations, comprising management of downhole and surface equipment through integration with the SAP R/3 maintenance module;

Accounting, which will include monthly allocation and valuation of volumes according to owners and contracts; management of producer-to-operator, shipper-to-transporter and transporter-to-operator transactions; preparation of volumetric and revenue regulatory and tax reports; volumes will be integrated with joint venture accounting and production sharing contracts modules; and TOW/cs, from Landmark Graphics, providing enterprise-wide collection, storage and analysis of daily operational data from sources such as handheld devices, SCADA systems, meter readings and tank strappings. The field production data captured in TOW/cs can be integrated with Landmark`s DSS32 production surveillance system and the SAP system.