McKENNA:  Let's start simple. What is the Offshore Study?

LYNN:  It's Solomon's worldwide benchmark of offshore production operations — we compare your assets against peers around the world, at the asset level, on the things that actually decide profitability: cost, production, reliability, and safety. It runs on our Comparative Performance Analysis methodology, thirty-plus years of upstream benchmarking, and the world's largest upstream performance database.

McKENNA:  The world’s largest is a big claim to make. Can you put a number to it?

LYNN:  Over a thousand offshore assets, and on FPSOs specifically, we hold ninety-two of the largest in the world, across seventy-six percent of every country that runs FPSO operations. That's not a sample. It's the deepest offshore operations dataset that exists. So, when we tell you what "good" looks like for your type of asset, it's grounded in more real operating data than anyone else can put behind that answer.

McKENNA:  So, you’re telling me that it’s all data backed, and grounded enough to be a fair comparison. Who’s going to be most interested in this?

LYNN:  Any offshore operator who wants to know, honestly, where they stand and where they can go. Whether you're running a fixed platform, a floater, or an FPSO, there's a peer group of assets like yours. You're never being compared to something that isn't a fair match.

McKENNA:  Benchmarking takes real effort to participate in. What's the return?

LYNN:  Let me give you the number, because it's a striking one. Across participants, the average ROI is around ten to twenty times the cost of the study.

McKENNA:  Even at the low end, that's significant.

LYNN:  It is. And it's not magic! It comes from closing gaps. A typical participant acts on the findings and closes about fifteen percent of the improvement opportunities we identify. In an offshore operation, where a single point of uptime or a reliability fix is worth enormous money, that fifteen percent dwarfs what the study costs.

McKENNA:  So the value is in what you do with it, not the report itself.

LYNN:  Exactly. And it goes beyond the operating line. We hand you a ranked, specific list of where the money is, but we also give you something you can take to your execs: a clear, credible path for continuous improvement and maximizing profit. We've seen major companies use Solomon's rankings to show shareholders and investors exactly that — that they're being run well and getting better. That external credibility shapes how investors see the company, and that's real value on top of the operational gains.

McKENNA:  When you benchmark an offshore asset, what are you actually looking at?

LYNN:  Four dimensions: cost, production, and maintenance and HSE. Underneath those, we go deep. Uptime and reliability. Repair and maintenance. Staffing and overhead. Well servicing and workover. Offshore logistics like helicopters and supply boats. And sustainability and process-safety metrics. Basically every lever that moves an offshore operation.

McKENNA:  That's genuinely every lever covered! Not just the top line numbers. Where does all that detail actually pay off?

LYNN:  It shows us where the money hides. Maintenance is usually the biggest cost lever, so for 2026 we've gone deeper there. Breaking it down to routine, subsea, and turnaround level, and evaluating how effective your turnarounds actually are, before and after. That's a big one: we've seen companies use the benchmarking to strike a better balance between their turnaround and non-turnaround maintenance strategies. Knowing how much to spend where is worth real money. We've added CapEx for more precise cost comparison, and staffing indices that show whether you're over- or under-staffed against peers.

McKENNA:  Some firms in this space basically hand you a cost ranking and tell you to cut your way to the bottom. Is the Solomon study based on the same idea – here’s your number, go be cheapest?

LYNN:  No. And that’s exactly the trap. Cutting heads to hit a low cost number usually just moves the problem downstream or out into the future. What we give you is your gap to the top performers, and insights into what’s behind them. Solomon doesn’t advocate cutting costs at the expense of reliability and uptime. Sometimes you need to spend money to improve your production efficiency.

McKENNA:  Say an operator looks at their unit operating cost, and it looks competitive. Why do they still need the study?

LYNN:  Because unit cost only tells you half the story, and it's the half you can already see. That's competitiveness: how your costs compare to the market. Useful, but it doesn't tell you whether you're actually running the asset well.

McKENNA:  What's the other half?

LYNN:  Efficiency. We normalize your costs for how complex your asset is to operate. So you’re measured on how well you run it, not on the hand you were dealt. Two assets, equal complexity, if one spends more, it’s an efficiency difference. Unit cost can’t see that gap. Our normalized analysis can.

McKENNA:  So two assets can have the same unit operating costs, but when you adjust for complexity one may be leaving money on the table. That's where the hidden opportunity is.

LYNN:  Right. And it’s rarely a small number. An asset that reads as competitive can be leaving millions on the table, year after year until someone puts a normalized view on it. Find that gap, close it, and that’s where the 10-20 times return actually comes from.

McKENNA:  Say I want in for 2026. What's involved, and how long until I see my study results?

LYNN:  Plan on about six to nine months, and there's a good reason it's not faster. This is a multi-client study. Every operator starts at the same time, submits their data on the same timeline, goes through the same validation, and nobody gets results until everybody's across the finish line.

McKENNA:  Why all the focus on everyone together?

LYNN:  Because the comparison is the product. It’s a 3-legged race. You're tied to every operator in the cycle. And this isn't public data we’re scraping - it's each operator's confidential operating data submitted directly and getting a full field of operators to share that takes time. Fast or slow on your end doesn't matter. We can't build the peer groups or report results until everyone's data is in, validated and accepted. Deliver early and there's no field to measure you against.

McKENNA:  What's actually involved on my end?

LYNN:  There’s four steps. First, we kick off and train your team on data collection, so you pull it right the first time. That upfront training matters. The heaviest lift on your end is that first data pull. So, we train you specifically to make it manageable. Then you submit. And that's where the part we take more seriously than anything comes in: input data review. Quality assurance on that data is one of our biggest differentiators. It's an eighteen-step process to make sure every number is correct and valid before we use it, because a comparison is only as good as the data underneath it. From there, our experts analyze it. Then we deliver the results, on-site or virtual, and walk you through the rankings, the gap analysis, and our recommendations.

McKENNA:  And if another provider is offering me a quicker turnaround time?

LYNN:  Then it’s not the same product we deliver. You can't run a real multi-client cohort in a couple of months. There's no time to gather everyone's data, validate it, and generate the insights. If someone's handing you results that fast, they're not comparing you against a live field of operators or current data. And that comparison is the entire point of the exercise.

McKENNA:  So if I want in for 2026, what do I need to do?

LYNN:  Reach out now, because the cohort is forming. Once it's set, you're waiting for the next cycle. Email us at Experts@SolomonInsight.com and we'll put together a participation proposal customized to your assets. That's the first step to seeing exactly where you stand, and where you can go.