OGM is designed to be used through all upstream project stages, with a primary purpose of supporting and accelerating the assess, appraise, and select phases. Later project stages can benefit from use of OGM as a what-if tool, incorporating late design impacts such as well surprise, and incorporating data such as weight report and as-built information during the construction phase. Even the operations phase can utilize OGM - both in planning for operations through use of the production profile modeler and operational cost model, and in analysis of the existing facility, including brownfield and debottlenecking work.

OGM provides a consistent and auditable approach to the capital appropriation process (also sometimes called value assurance), which progressively allocates larger amounts of capital as the project becomes better defined. The variability of information in early project stages requires a flexibility and rapid deliverable preparation that only OGM can provide, helping your company make the best decision in the most efficient manner.

Most of our competitors’ products can be used only as a cost estimate tool, while OGM is ultimately a design tool. Of similar products used in the concept selection process, only OGM provides first principles-based equipment sizing. This production fluid-based approach allows technical quantities to be calculated, which are then combined with unit rate and commodity pricing information to produced the cost estimate. The level of detail available for process and utility systems, pipelines, substructures, and other field objects allows the development planner or project engineer numerous ways to adjust the model to account for local variability, benchmark data, and other influences. All cost outputs can then be traced back to the relevant user inputs, calculated technical quantities, and unit rate values, thereby avoiding the black box approach of most early phase cost estimate methods.

A first pass estimate using OGM “out of the box” typically provides results in the 35-40% range, which is entirely appropriate for early concept work. By employing methods such as benchmarking and review of localized cost inputs, the accuracy range can be improved. Several clients have recently reported accuracies in the 10-15% range when using these methods. It should be noted that in early phases, fluid data and other inputs are provided at a relatively low confidence level. As the confidence level of inputs improves, naturally the variability of results will decrease.