2022 v2 Release Notes

New Features

BC Royalty Framework Updates

This release delivers the industry's most comprehensive model of the new B.C. royalty framework that is aligned with evaluators for standardized reserves evaluation in the province. With a sound and accurate economic model, you can have confidence in the results so you can direct your focus on the key economic drivers and analysis. Here is just a subset of royalty aspects incorporated:

  • The most up-to-date framework model including the new royalty rate price curves
  • Production categories that smoothly handle the transition of existing and new wells between frameworks
  • Proper handling of deep well credits, royalty reduction programs, and GCA based on category selection
  • The ability to run the old royalty framework as-is to analyze the impacts of the new framework

Bulk Operation Improvements

We’ve introduced significant improvements to the most popular bulk operation tools, including Data Views, the Data Manager, production updates, and spreadsheet imports. So, whether you are updating cost inputs from the spreadsheet importer, changing well header information from a Data View, or updating production history from an internal production system, Val Nav will fly through the updates faster than ever before. The improvements were made by drawing on learnings from the economic engine, which includes multi-threading certain operations. Similar to economics, options on thread allocation for these runs have been introduced to the config file. Note that these changes are focused on bulk operations only, so no performance changes are expected for economic run times. The most notable operations affected are:

  • Data View updates, including extra benefits to Well Info updates
  • Production updates via an external data connection
  • Spreadsheet imports including extra benefits to well info imports
  • XML Imports
  • All Data Manager operations
  • Data Validator
  • Recalc cached forecasts

New BI-focused Views

New BI-focused views will automatically be added to all Val Nav projects upon upgrade, allowing deeper analysis and easy generation of management presentations. The views blend key definitions and result streams in the databases so that DBA knowledge isn’t required to extract meaningful economic data. Simply connect your BI tool of choice to the BTAX_CASH_FLOW view and start building.

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Multi-distribution Plotting

We added multi-distribution plotting. This enables you to split sample sets into multiple probit plots or S-curves to analyze distributions against each other. Build more accurate type curves by answering questions like:

  • How does well spacing or parent/child relationships impact the distribution profile?
  • Are drill plans improving by vintage?
  • Are some operators or completion styles outperforming others?

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Type Well Plotting Updates

The styling and functionality of the type well plotting have gotten a few updates to improve the user experience and freshen up the UI:

  • Type well decline can now be toggled on and off to see the final projection relative to analog wells
  • You can now toggle between products and ratios
  • A cumulative volume/time variant is now available
  • Banding and gradients have been removed to provide more contrast (Insert picture attached)

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New Copy Multiple Tool

A new “Copy multiple” tool enables you to duplicate the current selection of entities for a specified amount of iterations to solve certain workflows, like duplicating a pad or grouping, downsizing spacing requiring well count increases, and more.

Other Enhancements

Cross Plot Options Changes

The cross plot options have been cleaned up so you can focus on the most relevant inputs for analysis. "Display UWI Labels" has moved to a context menu for each plot, "Type" has been removed, and "View" has been re-labeled to "Product"

Expanded Clear Economics Functionality

We expanded the "Clear Economics" tool to enable more granular cleanup of economic results by plans and scenarios. You must have the "Manage database tables" or "Modify Project Options" privilege and will be able to delete both project and user scenarios.

Other enhancements include:

  • Made the following well attributes available to build a hierarchy: Status, Zone, License
  • Added the ability to plot a cumulative vs time variant of the type well spaghetti plot.
  • Added the ability to filter on "Spud Date" and "Is Grouped".
  • Added a confirmation dialog to the "Clear all flags" button.
  • Added the ability to overlay the type well decline on the type well spaghetti chart.
  • Added the database name and path to the spreadsheet import log.
  • Significantly improved performance of custom field updates from the Data Views and the spreadsheet import.
  • Added a generic, unconfigured data source to External Connections in place of the FDC plug-in.
  • Added Condensate to the "Daily History" report template.
  • Added an "Apply ACCI to balance" flag on Alberta incentives to allow the exact balance, inclusive of ACCI, to be entered and used by the C* calculation.
  • Added "Kickoff" and "Landing" coordinates to allow more realistic well stick rendering on the map.
  • Improved logging for CDW imports including notifications for longer than expected run times.
  • Added menu options to control the axis plotting, sorting, and scaling of the S-curves found on the Cross Plot | Distribution tab
  • Reformatted the Distribution tab to give users more consistency and flow as they analyze data sets between Cross Plot tabs. The stats table has been moved in-line with the well info table allowing the distribution plot to be split into two plots.
  • Cross plot options are now saved per user for all entity types except type wells and rollups, which offers more consistency as users analyze different data sets
  • For plays where forecasts are derived by forecasting a liquid rate and water-based ratio, the forecasting engine has been updated so that a terminating WOR forecast terminates the entire forecast, matching existing 1+WOR and Oil Cut behavior. This equates to modeling a well watering out when too much water is produced relative to oil.
  • Fiscal regimes available to add to an entity are now sorted in alphanumeric order.
  • Changing the type well options now triggers a recalculation upon clicking OK.
  • ARIES Converter: Added support for conversion of time-based ratios denoted by the TIME keyword
  • ARIES Converter: Improved logging for improperly configured tables within ARIES databases.
  • ARIES Converter: Improved logging and error handling when PROPNUMs referenced in AC_ECON do not exist in AC_PROPERTY
  • ARIES Converter: Improved logging when columns in AC_PROPERTY are called via @M references but do not exist.
  • Schedule Adjustment Plug-In: Fixed an issue where forecast start dates were not updated properly.
  • Forecast Variance Plug-In: Improved the security model of the forecast variance plug-in for users with limited access to wells and global project data.

Bug Fixes

Fixed issues where: 

  • Certain entity types could not be exported from archives in SQL Server, including type wells.
  • Duplicate meter stations were created upon project creation.
  • Cost entities would incorrectly terminate based on fixed op cost termination.
  • Royalty calculation of plant condensate would fail with inactive company.
  • O+W and WOR were incorrectly interpreted as a product conflict.
  • The "Cum. to end" volume would incorrectly calculate if a mid-month forecast start date overlapped with production history.
  • Upgrades could fail when rollups are present.
  • An entity rescat forecast would be generated when re-applying a type well link.
  • The "Reserves Categories to Balance" and "Disclose" Reserves groups were not sorted by their specified order.
  • The reconciliation of the "Regimes/Royalties" input area could calculate incorrectly.
  • The "Apply Normalization" field was not sorted alphabetically.
  • Vendor IDs could crash if the FDC plug-in was not installed after previously being added.
  • The command line import does not use app.config log settings.
  • The wrong reserves category could show in the "Common Termination" report
  • The copy entity dialog position is not remembered.
  • A recalculation of normalized type wells would trigger upon entering the Type Well tab.
  • The type well graph would flicker when selecting different child wells.
  • The Save icon was enabled when entering the Interests & Royalties tab just after upgrade.
  • The "Per Plan" option in the Scenarios dialog would overlap the rest of the options when enabled.
  • Fixed an issue where temp DrillingInfo files would not be deleted after import.
  • The timing of ratio segments was not properly converted in the ARIES Converter.
  • Certain cost timing was only correctly converted in the PDP reserves category in the ARIES Converter.
  • Certain Abandonment and Salvage keywords were improperly handled in the ARIES Converter.