App increases company’s productivity

Standing near a rundown, oil-stained rig engine mount in a field north of Tulsa, Jamie Dolph had an idea of how he wanted to restore the abandoned oil well site, a bare scar in the green pasture.

Where saltwater runoff from the well had eroded the land, he wanted to put a pond. Extra dirt from digging the pond basin would fill in another wide area of exposed rock.

Dolph takes out his iPad, touches a few buttons and his plans to restore the site are saved. What would have taken piles of paperwork is now done in a few minutes and instantly available for all parties to see.

“When we talk about efficiency, this is efficiency across the board,” said Dolph, a project manager for Beacon Environmental Assistance Corp.

Beacon has contracted with the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board for the more than 12,700 old or abandoned well sites in the state that have been cleaned up since 1994.

For most of that time, the work was on paper. All the files on the properties that Beacon personnel managed was in large boxes they carried around in their trucks.

Data goes ‘live’

In the past year, Beacon developed a web application that the project managers can use to input and record data from the field. The app allows them to use geolocation to assign coordinates for the sites, detail what kind of material they observe and estimate costs for the restoration. All of that is accessible offline, but the information is uploaded as soon as they get in network and is then immediately available to Bea- con and OERB personnel.

“The OERB only got data when we would do our data every month,” Dolph said. “Now it’s live.”

Sometimes, representatives of the OERB would call project managers working on a project and ask about another project, Dolph said. The project manager would have to go back to their vehicle and thumb through their file box to find the project.

“Every point in the process, you’re saving time,” he said.

The new process also creates more secure information, said Pete Craig with Beacon.

“If anything happened to those files, they’re gone,” Craig said. “With this, it’s backed up and recoverable.”

In addition, historical data used by Beacon on previous restoration sites has been converted to electronic form for use in the field. Beacon and OERB staff can also upload and look at photos of the sites.

Beacon responds to competitive bids from OERB to act as consultant for the restoration projects, Dolph said.

Speedier process

Since 1994, 12,743 well sites have been restored with more than $78 million from the OERB, which is funded through voluntary contributions from energy producers and royalty owners.

Seminole County has had the most restorations, 1,863.

Dolph said that with the record system, project managers will hopefully be able to speed up the process, which takes more than a year from site identification to completed restoration.

“I’ve been working in oil fields for 18 years,” he said. “Eighteen years ago, this was the stuff you dreamed of.”