E&P Capital Project Industry Trends and Forecasts Showcased at UCEC 2019

Members of IPA’s Upstream Cost Engineering Committee (UCEC) met June 13, 2019, at The Woodlands, near Houston, Texas, to bolster their cost engineering capabilities with the latest capital project metrics available to the E&P Industry.

The UCEC, an Upstream Industry Benchmarking Consortium (UIBC) subcommittee, strives to improve upstream project and business results by providing essential metrics for better cost engineering. Member company representatives gather once a year to learn about and review new UCEC metrics packages prepared by IPA. Companies use these upstream metrics to compare their upstream project cost and schedule outcomes with industry cost and schedule norms and, in general, boost project estimate assurance and evaluation quality.

Featured at the UCEC 2019 annual meeting was a new study showcasing a historical look at important E&P industry trends including capital spend, rig utilization rates, and contractor backlog data. The study then delivered an initial forecast of these cost engineering trends. Other IPA presentations delivered at the meeting reviewed research on the state of industry project controls and also fast-paced subsea tie-back and carbon pricing. All UCEC research is based on actual E&P industry capital project data from IPA’s proprietary databases.