00:00 Reporter
Bonner’s mastery of every aspect of Chevron’s business will be essential when she takes up her next challenge in 2027 as President of oil and gas products. On her visit to the Permian basin, she explained that the longevity and scale of the company’s holdings there has become a huge competitive advantage.
00:23 Bonner
We have interest in one and every five whales in the Permian. So an unmatched position in terms of data and history.
00:34 Reporter
How efficient is Chevron now in terms of actually extracting oil in the permian? How many rigs does it take?
00:41 Bonner
We’re 40% more efficient when it comes to CapX efficiency here in the permian than we were two years ago.
00:50 Reporter
Efficiency is also central to the company’s production strategy. Chevron could draw more than a million barrels a day from its permian wells, but boosting volume is no longer a priority.
01:06 Bonner
A million barrels a day is our sweet spot because we have the factory optimized um at a million barrels a day. We have reliability efforts that allow us to produce at a million barrels a day with less cost.
01:21 Reporter
Yeah, what does reliability mean?
01:22 Bonner
I mean it means keeping our plant here um up for the maximum amount of time. So avoiding unplanned events, shutdowns, issues with equipment, issues with the whales coming into the the facility. There’s 27 whales coming into this facility. We try and make them as productive as possible. One of the ways we’re doing that is putting advanced chemicals into the reservoir. and think of that as kind of it washes the oil from the rock. And so this is an area where we have seen over the last year 20% increase in production from whales that have been treated with this chemical. Um it also involves keeping the facilities running at high reliability, equipment monitoring, doing turnarounds, proactive maintenance. All of those things allow the equipment behind us to operate at the right technical limits that also contributes to reliability.
02:22 Reporter
How important is that in a time of geopolitics where potentially other places are a little bit on uncertain footing?
02:28 Bonner
It’s critical always, but at a time where we’ve got disruptions around the world, at a time where the US is a net exporter, um it’s even more important.
02:44 Reporter
Productivity in the Permian is also kept on track by software. At the integrated operations Center, technicians monitor information coming from the field in real time.
03:00 Bonner
So think of all the data from all the whales and all the equipment across the basin. All of our operators here can see all of that data right now. In addition to that, they’re also taking action here. So where they can prevent an emission, where they can prevent a production loss. This integrated operation center has the technology and has the workflows and has the people here to be able to take those actions. AI is also playing a bigger role over the last few years given that here in the Permian, we’ve been trialling and testing and integrating, leveraging that to the full extent.
03:39 Reporter
Is AI also helping you actually find more oil in wells you’re working in?
03:45 Bonner
It is. In fact, um a really good example is a proprietary technology that we’re just starting to integrate here in the IOC. It’s called George. Um think of George as a production optimizer. It’s a hands-off optimizer. So in the past, um production optimization involved being out in the field, getting the data from the production facility and the whales, and then modeling that and taking some views on how to maximize production. George allows us to collect that data and to automatically adjust parameters to get the most out of the whales. And so what we’ve seen at a pilot scale is that it is reducing the decline from our whales and it’s helping, um it is resulting in more kind of steady production and less downtime.
Source: finance.yahoo.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.
