Acquisitions and divestitures (A&D) are fast-moving, high-stakes decisions. The pressure to get an accurate evaluation done quickly is real, but evaluations aren’t just about plugging in numbers and hitting “run.” They’re about understanding the assumptions baked into the data, questioning what’s realistic, and making sure you’re capturing all potential risks and opportunities.

Whether you’re at a company that’s pre-acquisition, or running an evaluation at an established company, the challenge remains the same: getting to an informed decision before the deadline.

The Evaluation Process

Someone asks you for an evaluation of an acquisition and sends you an ARIES or ComboCurve database. Now what? There are so many parameters and inputs that need to be reviewed:

• Production forecasts for existing wells
• Reasonableness of future well locations, as well as correct reserve class and category
• Type curves for future wells
• Development plan/rig schedule for future wells
• Capex estimates for future wells
• Opex estimates
• Commodity pricing/inflation

If you’re pre-acquisition, you might be handling multiple roles in the company, but if you’re in a larger company that means you have to coordinate with several people to get the necessary inputs. That takes time.

Key Pitfalls of Evaluations

Over the hundreds (possibly thousands) of evaluations I’ve done of acquisitions and divestitures in oil and gas, these are some of the most common issues I’ve seen:

Trusting the sales case

I don’t see this with technical people, but unfortunately I often do with management. It’s a sales case. The seller expects you to cut it, and they’re trying to get as much money for their asset as they can. Please don’t ever take a sales case and just run with it. (And if you’re using ARIES, you should also be using Validator!)

Not accounting for impacts on existing wells

If you’ll be developing new wells that offset existing wells, you need to account for the impacts on the existing wells. First, expect downtime on your existing wells. Whether you preemptively shut in the well to minimize impacts, or the well dies from a frac hit, that production is delayed. The second impact is accurately estimating whether future wells are fully reserve adds, or whether you’re also accelerating reserves from some of the existing wells. If it’s the latter, and you don’t adjust the existing wells’ forecasts to account for that, you’re overestimating your future production and reserves.

Not running enough scenarios

Since most evaluations have a short time frame before you need to submit a bid, if your current process or software is slow, it limits the number of scenarios you can consider. Or even worse – you run out of time to incorporate all the changes you need to update. You need to be able to run scenarios in minutes, not hours (or days 😬).

Using Planner for evaluations

It’s fairly common for companies that are pre-acquisition, or who are evaluating a potential acquisition, to think they don’t need scheduling software. Without it, though, you’re not using your time or resources efficiently, and you’re often making decisions on scenarios that haven’t been fully analyzed or are less than ideal. 

Planner is, by far, the quickest upstream planning tool available. Creating a plan takes minutes, and you can adjust schedules and run scenarios in milliseconds. It also has the ability to account for simops, offset frac interference/frac hits, and various constraints such as central tank battery or takeaway limitations. 

Creating a plan

Planner integrates with both ARIES and ComboCurve, allowing you to bring in possible drilling locations and existing PDP wells, along with their forecasts and type curves. This enables you to quickly populate a plan with information provided by the seller. From there, you can set your process template, available resources, capex, opex, constraints, and more. The use of lookup tables and formulas allows you to set it up once and then quickly adjust for various lateral lengths, target formations, or any other attribute that’s important to you.

Frac hits and simops

By setting rules around which activities or shut-ins you want within a defined distance, you can automatically include the impacts of frac hits and simops for both future drilling locations and existing PDPs.

Incorporating constraints

Limited midstream take-away? Central tank battery or compressor constraints? Your forecasted production and revenue incorporate all constraints. You have the ability to view both potential and constrained production, along with the specific wells that are impacted and the duration of the impact. This also lets you know which areas might benefit from extra capex investment to improve take-away.

Running new scenarios

Want to add a rig? Done in less than a minute. Same for dropping a rig, or a frac crew. The schedule and associated metrics (revenue, capex, production, etc) are updated instantaneously.

A Competitive Edge

The ability to rapidly evaluate scenarios, understand risks, and optimize development plans can be the difference between securing a great asset and overpaying for a bad one. The best A&D teams don’t just crunch numbers; they ask the right questions, challenge assumptions, and use tools that make their process faster and more robust.

Planner transforms what used to be days of work into minutes of efficient planning. With Planner, you’re equipped to confidently make rapid, data-driven decisions that account for the real-world complex realities of field development – from frac hits to simops to infrastructure constraints. What used to take days now takes minutes, giving you more time to run multiple scenarios and present your leadership team with comprehensive analyses that stand up to scrutiny. In the fast-paced world of A&D, having the right tools doesn’t just save time – it helps you identify the truly valuable opportunities while avoiding costly mistakes.

At the end of the day, evaluations are all about making informed decisions quickly. If you’re relying on outdated methods or struggling with slow evaluations, you’re leaving money and opportunity on the table. Contact us to see how we can help you improve your evaluations