Frequently Asked Questions

A: The NGPF Study uses Solomon’s proprietary CPA methodology to provide a comprehensive assessment of your assets' competitive position through multiple perspectives and helps creates a data-driven roadmap to continuous improvement.

A: The NGPF Study results supply data-driven insight to help guide your optimization plans, eliminate shortfalls, close performance gaps with peers, and prioritize next steps to sustainable performance excellence.

A: The study considers key operational variables to normalize the differences in terms of size and complexity.

A: Multiple types of peer groups are used in the performance rankings. Study participants use them to compare their plant characteristics, resource requirements, and performance with a subset of similar plants.

A: The study includes assets from National Oil Companies, Integrated Oil Companies, Independents, Join Ventures, etc.

A: The typical NGPF Study takes about six months to complete.

A: Yes, the study process can be accelerated to get results in less than 6 months.

A: The following success factors maximize the value of benchmarking: stakeholders’ commitment, data quality, findings relevance, and opportunities prioritization.

A: The Onshore Study uses Solomon’s proprietary CPA benchmarking methodology to compare the operational performance of onshore operators around the world. The study’s goal is to help operators optimize and improve their onshore operations, enhance production efficiency, and combat the impact of volatile oil prices on operating margins.

A: The study scope includes the operations of wells from subsurface to wellhead equipment, surface gathering and processing facilities/equipment, in-field flowlines/pipelines, and the field general administration that directly supports the above operations.

A: The onshore benchmarking reviews are an “asset-to-asset” comparison considering the complexity associated to each asset.

A: As the cost accounting systems for E&P companies worldwide differ significantly, Solomon has developed a standardized set of cost categories that are used in every benchmarking study. This important step levels the comparison of operating expenses for each asset.

A: Solomon’s key approach for cost normalization is to define relations between cost drivers related to each cost category. Solomon normalization models are developed for each cost category and each peer group. The normalized assessment works to pinpoint performance gaps between the asset and peer group leaders and discovers potential cost optimization opportunities in every major category.

A: The study includes assets from National Oil Companies, Integrated Oil Companies, Independents, and Joint Ventures.

A: The typical Onshore Study takes about six months to complete.

A: Field Engineering, Finance, Human Resources, Asset Management

A: The success factors that the Onshore Study uses to maximize benchmarking value are as follows: Stakeholders Commitment, Data Quality, Findings Relevance, and Opportunities Prioritization.

The Olefin Study is a comparative performance analysis that uses proprietary data to provide participants with a comprehensive assessment of competitiveness for each of their plants, including economic gaps for all key performance areas against industry peers. This benchmarking analysis uncovers key areas of underperformance, enabling root-cause analysis to identify appropriate quick and direct solutions to optimize/reduce costs and maximize performance.

Yes, if a plant only closes 10% of the identified gaps from study results, the payout is over 200 times the study fees. Most plants see even greater performance improvement.

Yes, typically 70–80% of the industry capacity participate in the Olefin Study each year. In our 2021 study, 145 plants participated in the study for a total of 73% of the industry capacity worldwide.

Solomon’s Olefin Study can include, on an optional basis, Carbon Insights and greenhouse gases (GHG) Gap Report. The offering is a plant-specific analysis of carbon emission performance, quantifying the impact of more than 10 differentiating factors that drive comparative carbon performance for olefin plants.

The study analyzes production cost, net cash margin, return on investment, capacity utilization, energy expense, maintenance cost, personnel cost, other operating expense, operational availability, maintenance cost efficiency, annualized turnaround downtime, annualized turnaround cost, reliability & maintenance effectiveness, energy intensity, carbon footprint, environmental emissions, and other performance metrics against peers to identify gaps.

Olefin Study results can be leveraged in many ways to improve performance. You can use results to assess competitive strengths and weaknesses, identify actionable performance gaps, establish performance improvement targets, formulate improvement plans and programs, prioritize improvement activities, justify capital investments and staffing plans, measure progress of improvement activities, and demonstrate performance to joint venture partners.