How Oklahoma Energy Companies Are Using Custom Software to Cut Costs

Oklahoma's energy sector—particularly oil and gas—faces persistent pressure to reduce costs while maintaining production. Commodity price volatility, increasing regulatory complexity, and the maturation of unconventional plays (STACK, SCOOP, Merge) mean the operators who thrive are those who operate most efficiently.

One often-overlooked efficiency lever: custom software that automates manual processes, provides real-time visibility into operations, and eliminates the data silos that plague many operators.

This article explores how Oklahoma energy companies are using custom software to cut costs, with real-world examples and practical ROI calculations.

The Cost of Manual Processes

Walk into many Oklahoma energy companies and you'll find highly skilled petroleum engineers and geologists spending hours on tasks that software should handle:

Daily Production Reporting: Pulling data from SCADA systems, manually entering it into spreadsheets, reconciling discrepancies, and emailing reports to management. Time cost: 1-2 hours per day per field operator.

Well Performance Tracking: Manually plotting decline curves, identifying underperforming wells, and calculating optimal workover candidates. Time cost: 4-8 hours per week per production engineer.

Regulatory Compliance: Tracking Oklahoma Corporation Commission permits, monitoring deadlines, compiling environmental data for reports. Time cost: Highly variable, but spikes around reporting deadlines.

Vendor Management: Tracking service tickets, reconciling invoices against authorized work, analyzing vendor performance. Time cost: 2-4 hours per week per operations manager.

Lease Operating Expense (LOE) Analysis: Aggregating costs across wells, identifying cost anomalies, benchmarking against offset operators. Time cost: 1-2 days per month per finance analyst.

Individually, these tasks seem manageable. Collectively, they represent thousands of labor hours annually—hours spent on data wrangling rather than decision-making.

Automation Opportunity 1: Production Data Pipelines

Many Oklahoma operators use SCADA systems to monitor well production, tank levels, and equipment status. But getting that data into usable formats for reporting and analysis is often manual:

The Manual Process:

1. Log into SCADA system
2. Export production data for each well or battery
3. Copy data into Excel spreadsheet
4. Calculate daily, weekly, monthly totals
5. Create charts for management reports
6. Email reports to stakeholders

The Automated Solution:
Custom software that:

• Connects directly to SCADA systems via API or database access
• Automatically ingests production data (oil, gas, water volumes)
• Calculates KPIs (production per well, decline rates, operating efficiency)
• Generates dashboards with real-time visibility
• Sends automated email reports or alerts when thresholds are exceeded

ROI Calculation:

• Time saved: 1.5 hours/day × 260 working days = 390 hours/year
• Labor cost: 390 hours × $75/hour (burdened rate for field operator) = $29,250/year
• Development cost: $30,000-50,000 for a production data pipeline and dashboard
• Payback period: 12-18 months

Additional benefits:

• Real-time alerts for equipment issues (reducing downtime)
• Historical trend analysis (identifying optimization opportunities)
• Regulatory compliance (automated reporting to Oklahoma Corporation Commission)

Automation Opportunity 2: 3D Seismic Visualization

Oklahoma's unconventional plays rely heavily on 3D seismic data for horizontal well placement. Legacy seismic software (Petrel, Kingdom) is expensive ($25,000-100,000+ per seat) and difficult to share across distributed teams.

Custom web-based seismic viewers address these limitations. We built exactly this capability for an energy client in our DepthSync project—a collaborative 3D seismic platform that enables geoscience teams to work together in real-time.

Traditional Approach:

• Geoscientists work on individual workstations
• Collaboration requires in-person meetings or screen sharing
• Sharing interpretations means copying massive files
• High licensing costs limit the number of users

Modern Web-Based Approach:

• Browser-based access (no specialized hardware required)
• Real-time collaboration (multiple users viewing and annotating the same data)
• Cloud storage (single source of truth, no file copying)
• Flexible pricing (subscription vs. perpetual license)

Cost Savings:

• Licensing: $50,000/year (2 legacy seats) vs. $10,000/year (web-based subscription for 5 users)
• Hardware: $5,000/year (high-end workstation amortization) eliminated
• Collaboration efficiency: 20% reduction in interpretation time due to real-time collaboration
• Total savings: $40,000-60,000/year for a small geoscience team

For a detailed exploration of modern seismic visualization, see: 3D Seismic Data Visualization: How Modern Software Transforms Exploration.

Automation Opportunity 3: Regulatory Compliance Tracking

Oklahoma operators must comply with Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) regulations covering:

• Well permits and completions reports
• Monthly production reporting
• Injection well monitoring (for saltwater disposal)
• Environmental incident reporting
• Abandoned well plugging

Tracking deadlines, compiling required data, and ensuring timely submission is labor-intensive and high-risk (late filings can result in fines or drilling permit delays).

Custom Compliance Software:

• Deadline tracking: Automated reminders for upcoming regulatory filings
• Data aggregation: Pull production data, well records, and inspection reports from existing systems
• Form generation: Auto-populate OCC forms from database records
• Submission tracking: Log when filings were submitted and maintain audit trail

ROI:

• Time savings: 10-15 hours/month × $75/hour = $9,000-13,500/year
• Risk reduction: Avoided fines and permit delays (difficult to quantify but potentially $10,000-100,000+)
• Development cost: $40,000-60,000
• Payback period: 3-5 years (or immediate if a major fine is avoided)

Automation Opportunity 4: Vendor Performance Analytics

Oklahoma energy companies work with dozens of service vendors: drilling contractors, completion services, trucking, equipment rental, maintenance. Managing these relationships and optimizing costs is challenging.

Manual Approach:

• Invoices arrive via email or mail
• Finance manually enters data into accounting system
• No systematic tracking of vendor performance (on-time delivery, quote accuracy, quality issues)
• Cost analysis is ad-hoc (usually triggered by a dispute or budget review)

Automated Vendor Management System:

• Invoice automation: OCR (optical character recognition) extracts data from invoices
• Cost tracking: Aggregate costs by vendor, service type, well, or time period
• Performance metrics: Track on-time delivery, quote vs. actual cost variance, rework frequency
• Benchmarking: Compare vendor costs to industry averages or competitive bids
• Alerts: Flag cost anomalies ("This trucking charge is 30% higher than average")

ROI:

• Labor savings: 8 hours/week × $60/hour × 52 weeks = $24,960/year
• Cost reduction: Identifying and eliminating 5% waste in $2M annual vendor spend = $100,000/year
• Development cost: $50,000-75,000
• Payback period: 6-12 months

Automation Opportunity 5: Well Performance Optimization

Decline curve analysis—predicting future production from historical data—is fundamental to asset management. It informs:

• Economic forecasts and reserves booking
• Workover and recompletion decisions
• Acquisition valuations

Typically, petroleum engineers manually fit decline curves in Excel or specialized software (Aries, PHDWin). For portfolios of 50-500+ wells, this is time-consuming and often falls behind.

Automated Decline Curve Analysis:

• Import production data from databases or SCADA
• Fit decline curves automatically (exponential, hyperbolic, harmonic)
• Flag wells deviating from expected performance (candidates for workover or artificial lift optimization)
• Generate economic forecasts (EUR, NPV at various oil/gas prices)
• Prioritize intervention candidates based on ROI

ROI:

• Time savings: 1 day/month × $100/hour × 12 months = $9,600/year
• Optimized production: Identifying 2-3 additional workover candidates per year, each adding $50,000-200,000 in NPV
• Development cost: $40,000-60,000
• Payback period: Immediate to 12 months (depending on portfolio size)

Why Custom Software vs. Off-the-Shelf?

Commercial software exists for many oil and gas functions (production accounting, land management, reserves analysis). Why build custom?

Workflow Fit: Off-the-shelf software is designed for the "average" operator. Oklahoma companies often have unique workflows (specific regulatory requirements, particular asset types, integration with legacy systems).

Integration: Energy companies use a mix of systems—accounting software, SCADA platforms, GIS tools, document management. Custom software can integrate seamlessly with existing systems, while commercial software often requires expensive customization or manual data transfer.

Total Cost of Ownership: Enterprise software licensing can be $50,000-500,000+ annually, plus implementation and customization costs. For mid-sized operators, custom development can deliver equivalent functionality at lower long-term cost.

Competitive Differentiation: If your operational efficiency comes from unique processes or analytics (proprietary well optimization algorithms, specialized risk models), commercial software won't provide that edge.

Flexibility: As your business evolves, custom software can be adapted quickly. Commercial software upgrades are on the vendor's timeline, and customizations can be lost during version updates.

The Local Advantage: Software Development in Oklahoma

Working with Oklahoma-based software developers offers specific advantages for energy companies:

Domain Knowledge: Developers familiar with Oklahoma's regulatory environment (OCC permits, tax structures) and geological context (STACK, SCOOP, conventional plays) understand requirements faster.

On-Site Access: For integrations with on-premise SCADA systems or legacy databases, local developers can visit facilities, work with field personnel, and understand operational context.

Cost Structure: Oklahoma development rates are 20-40% lower than coastal markets (San Francisco, New York, Boston) while maintaining high quality.

Time Zone Alignment: No scheduling challenges for meetings, and real-time collaboration during business hours.

At Of Ash and Fire, we specialize in custom software for Oklahoma's energy sector, combining technical expertise with deep understanding of the industry's operational and regulatory realities.

Getting Started: First Steps

1. Identify High-Cost Manual Processes: Where do your engineers, geologists, or analysts spend time on repetitive data tasks?

2. Quantify Current Costs: Labor hours × hourly rate = annual cost of status quo

3. Define Success Metrics: Time saved? Cost reduced? Errors eliminated? New capabilities enabled?

4. Start Small: Pilot project addressing one specific pain point (e.g., automate daily production reporting)

5. Prove ROI: Demonstrate value with a targeted solution before expanding to additional workflows

6. Iterate and Expand: Apply lessons learned, add features, tackle adjacent problems

Conclusion

Oklahoma energy companies face relentless pressure to reduce costs. While the industry often focuses on drilling efficiency and completion optimization, operational software is an overlooked lever.

Automating manual processes, integrating data silos, and providing real-time visibility into operations can reduce costs by 20-40% in targeted areas—with payback periods of 6-18 months.

The companies succeeding in this environment aren't just drilling better wells; they're operating smarter through custom software that eliminates waste, accelerates decision-making, and provides competitive intelligence.

Ready to explore how custom software can reduce costs in your operations? Contact Of Ash and Fire to discuss automation opportunities tailored to Oklahoma's energy sector.