2023 v2 Release Notes

New Features

Short-Term Production Modeling

With an increasing focus in the industry on near-term forecasts, Val Nav 2023 v2 introduces functionality to model the impact of operational events like tubing replacements, re-fracs, plant turnarounds, and much more on the long-term forecast. Doing so in the same platform that generates your long-term forecasts simplifies your workflow, saves valuable time and effort, and reduces the risk from data translation and transfer. This precision allows you to confidently predict pipeline commitments and monthly outlooks.

With the new short-term production modeling functionality, you will be able to:

Define operational event types at a project level.
Configure whether operational events preserve or factor volumes.
Enter daily per-product factors to model the effect of the event and refine the long-term well forecast.
View the impact of the events on the Wellhead tab.
Bulk update well-level events with standard tooling: Data Views, Spreadsheet Import, Input Copier, and more.
Store the volumes lost, created, or deferred from these events in the database for analysis. [Id: 228369]

GIF demonstration. Click image to expand or minimize.

Operating Cost Lookups

Economic modeling leaps forward again in Val Nav 2023 v2, extending the lookup model to operating costs. Just like capital costs, they can now be templated as lookup models that are assigned for wells to reference.

Sharing the same structure as price decks, opex decks with lookups automatically update all wells that use them. Sensitivities can be created just by running different decks without any change to the wells.

Even better, they are built relative to an anchor date on the well so costs are scheduled dynamically. As each well's schedule evolves, Val Nav updates the cost timing based on the updated anchor date requiring no extra updates from the user.

Altogether this means that cost modeling will be more efficient, trusted, and connected than ever before. [Id: 228382]

Click image to expand or minimize.

Supercharged Performance

Continuing our story of performance improvements across recent releases, we’ve introduced significant performance improvements to two of the most critical workflows: calculating economics and moving between entities. Both see boosts from a variety of optimizations including one larger change for each:

Economic result cleanup will now be run asynchronously from the calculation for SQL and Oracle-based projects. This removes a key bottleneck from the calculation process.The cleanup method will be controllable by the application config file and can be reset to current behavior.
When selecting a well, only the data from the selected tab will be loaded, boosting performance by minimizing data requests.

Altogether, Val Nav will fly through calculations and users will glide between wells faster than ever before! [Id: 232765]

Entity-level Reference and Discount Dates

Single-well and AFE economics is often about normalizing timing for comparison against time-sensitive economic indicators like NPVs and RORs. For instance, analysis of two identical wells drilled in February and December would favor the February well if the basis of comparison was the NPV as of January since more discounting is required for the December well.

To help with this challenge, the reference and discount dates can now be set for individual wells. With a well-level reference and discount date placed at first spend, AFEs can be compared on a fair, equal footing. Note that this functionality is best suited for single-well economics, so shared calculations like CTEs, Ring Fences, and folder-level results will continue to use scenario or project reference dates. [Id: 147822]

Strengthening Type Curve Workflows

Val Nav 2023 v2 also adds thoughtful improvements to type curves with a focus on how they are applied to undeveloped wells in Asset or Reserves projects:

A new spreadsheet import for type curve links is available so undeveloped wells can be updated en-masse, including dynamically determining the scaling factor via our three scaling modes: Existing Factor, Production, and Normalization.
When sharing type curves between databases, an option to exclude analog wells has been added so that only the type curve parameters are sent. This improves sharing to Asset and Reserves databases that typically don't have all of the competitor analog wells in the dataset. [Id: 239634]

GIF demonstration. Click image to expand or minimize.

Forecasting by Exception

The Forecast Variance workflow incorporated in Val Nav 2023 also sees an update in usability. Now, the calculation can use the forecast backfit so variance can be run at any time. Simply, run the variance from the Forecast menu at any time and find the wells deviating most from production to focus your efforts on! [Id: 237629]

GIF demonstration. Click image to expand or minimize.

Enhancements

Added the following events to track in project history: plan modifications and company additions, deletions, and modifications. [Id: 227838]
Added the entity object ID as read-only to the data view to improve the process of working in databases, BI tools, and archives. [Id: 235681]
Added a new anchor option for costs that may be independent of entity timing, a lookup can now anchor to a fixed date: "Manual Date". [Id: 236084]
Added a new operating cost to model transportation costs that apply to the net lease produce volume: "Net Variable GP&T Cost". [Id: 232589]
Added graph comments to view on the Comments tab. [Id: 132591]
Extended the number of available daily pressure fields from 10 to 20. [Id: 100327]
Added more zoom options for previewing Reports. [Id: 244608]
Improved handling of very steep declines that calculate secant and tangent declines that are too large to store in a database. [Id: 160020]
Added an option to calculate forecast variance using calendar day rates. [Id: 241084]
Clarified hierarchy and scenario visibility options in their dialogs. [Id: 245599]
Standardized usage of the Well Status field that was inconsistently referred to as "Status" or "Well Status". [Id: 174938]
Allowed "Well Name" to be used as the Asset Name on the export to Enersight. [Id: 245710]
Introduced the ability to bring back Enersight's calculated producing time back into Operational Events. [Id: 240862]
Removed padding on API numbers to store 14 digits so exact lengths can be stored. [Id: 90963]
Added in-app warnings when fits are requested but aren't generated due to a variety of reasons including invalid user options, wells deemed to be shut-in, and more. [Id: 239506]
Introduced a new dynamic product mapper to the Import from Enersight to support unique workflows in Enersight. [Id: 244667]
Made daily pressure fields optional in data source imports. [Id: 241869]
A new Data Manager tool has been built to convert lookup costs into manual costs: "Realize Lookups". In a few use cases, wells using lookups need to be disconnected from the live lookup and realize them as manual inputs on the well: ◦To capture the assumptions of an AFE made at the time of approval. ◦As an undeveloped entity approaches development and cost assumptions need to be further refined than the generic lookup model. ◦For use by the Val Nav-Execute integration to populate projects in Execute’s Budgeting and Forecasting module. [Id: 239627]
We’ve introduced more flexibility to deal with the different variations in how API numbers are stored and reported elsewhere. Now, you can import by proxy against API-10, -12, and -14 whether formatted with dashes or not, and you can view the unformatted version in the data view alongside the formatted one. [Id: 124430]
Removed limitations on the discount date that required it be set before the reference and economic calculation start dates. [Id: 242569]
Redesigned archive modes to simplify options and introduced an economic-input-only mode to reduce archive sizes when full economic results are not necessary. [Id: 229982]
Updated the branding across the app. [Id: 244666]

Fixed Defects

Fixed an issue that caused the Technical Comparison tab to crash occasionally. [Id: 248134]
Fixed an issue where changes to the Ops Event data area would not trigger when editing Common through from another reserves category. [Id: 235650]
Fixed an issue where custom result fields were not imported via XML. [Id: 236196]
Added optional logging for issues related to multi-threaded operations. [Id: 236082]
Improved error messages related to invalid production categories in the economic services log. [Id: 178670]
Fixed an issue where the New Mexico Emergency School Tax Oil Rate was incorrectly set at .0315% instead of 3.15%. [Id: 105542]
Fixed an issue where graph scaling was reset when changing decline parameters. [Id: 248148]
Updated the Hotkey legend to reflect the rename of the "B"-factor arps parameter from "N". [Id: 244771]
Fixed an issue where the Arizona Privilege Tax Rate was incorrectly reset in June 2010. [Id: 150208]
Fixed an issue where certain Oracle character configurations could disallow custom currencies. [Id: 228073]
Fixed an issue where lease start and end dates were ignored in custom fiscal regimes. [Id: 244416]
Fixed an issue where cases would require recalculation upon opening a project when capital cost decks were not used. [Id: 250662]
Fixed an issue where the Choke Size daily field would not plot on custom graphs. [Id: 241404]
Fixed an issue when using "Draw Profile" where short, flat segments would not be created properly. [Id: 241965]
Fixed an issue where technical gross ultimate volumes could be double-counted on certain reports. [Id: 234722]
Fixed an issue where PCOS deductions were improperly calculated when using new BC royalty production categories on wells with multi-product interests. [Id: 244349]
Fixed an issue where an error is triggered by opening the Print Preview from the Report Designer on a report that does not have any entities selected. [Id: 175766]
Fixed an issue where Monthly/Annual tables show "Jan 0001" for dates with no entry. [Id: 175768]
Fixed an issue where y-axis max/min settings are occasionally not maintained while switching between wells. [Id: 241204]
Fixed an issue where Sandbox entries on General Economics do not show in Data View. [Id: 164383]
Fixed an issue where non-line series styles do not show up on the Technical Comparison tab. [Id: 249816]
Fixed an issue where the plant tab of type wells could not be opened if their plant data was changed in the data view. [Id: 237984]
Upgraded map components to address a newly discovered Chromium vulnerability: CVE-2023-4863. [Id: 247691]
Added "Zone" to the list of reserved names so duplicates can be created. [Id: 244946]
Fixed an issue where clicking away from and back to a well while in fit mode would cause a crash. [Id: 242780]
Fixed an issue where the waterfall chart would not respect the current unit system. [Id: 246265]