Ancala Midstream Achieves Production Excellence for Its Oil and Gas Assets with EnergySys on AWS

Ancala Midstream Acquisitions Limited (Ancala Midstream) is managing complex commercial agreements and transforming its business using low-code software from AWS Partner EnergySys Limited (EnergySys). The oil and gas operator needed a highly configurable system to manage its assets and infrastructure. It chose to adopt a cloud-native solution from EnergySys, which is powered by AWS services like Amazon EC2 and AWS Lambda. With the EnergySys solution, Ancala Midstream can respond to complex business challenges, provide data to its partners and stakeholders faster, and deploy bespoke applications with ease at a faster pace.

When its infrastructure management system was nearing the end of its life, Ancala Midstream was in the market for a more efficient solution. As an independent oil and gas operator, the company oversees a complex network of midstream oil and gas assets. These include the Scottish Area Gas Evacuation (SAGE) Pipeline and the SAGE Terminal System, which transports approximately 10 percent of the United Kingdom’s gas supply. To manage these complex assets, Ancala Midstream needed a flexible, simple-to-use system that would help it meet commercial obligations and provide data to its stakeholders, shippers, and suppliers at a faster pace.

Ancala Midstream chose to adopt a cloud solution powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). After seeking recommendations from other oil and gas operators, the company turned to AWS Partner EnergySys and implemented its powerful low-code software designed specifically for oil and gas companies. Through this collaboration with EnergySys, Ancala Midstream unlocked a new level of scalability and agility for managing its wide network of assets.

Founded in 2001, EnergySys was one of the first companies to launch a cloud-native application and data management platform for the oil and gas industry. Its software-as-a-service solution is hosted on AWS and uses multiple services to manage its users’ infrastructure, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which provides secure and resizable compute capacity for virtually any workload. EnergySys’s solution is accessible, simple to upgrade, and rapidly deployable from any location, at any time.

EnergySys is also low code, using logic to describe an application or process instead of complex coding languages. This means it can be configured by business users, opening up a new level of customization. “The oil and gas industry has many different types of assets with different commercial arrangements and measurement systems,” says Dr. Peter Black, managing director of EnergySys. “We recognize that the way to deliver value and innovation to our customers is to achieve economies of scale. Generating a large customer base on a standard system is critical to improving the quality of software and lowering the total cost of ownership.”

Traditional oil and gas software is highly complex and inflexible, resulting in a solution that often doesn’t meet customer needs. Many customers resort to supplementing gaps with risky and time-consuming manual workarounds. With EnergySys, companies can instead configure applications that meet their unique needs on a standard cloud solution without having to rely on specialists or the vendor to make changes.

In 2019, Ancala Midstream approached EnergySys for help managing its oil and gas production data. To guide the project, the oil and gas operator developed a statement of requirements that outlined the features that it needed for the system and the tasks necessary to complete the implementation. EnergySys then engaged Accord Energy Solutions to undertake the project. Step by step, the teams configured the software to meet Ancala Midstream’s needs, finishing the project on time and under budget.

After implementing EnergySys’s software as its production management system in April 2021, Ancala Midstream achieved a higher level of scalability and flexibility. The cloud-native system relies on serverless AWS solutions like AWS Lambda, an event-driven compute service that developers use to run code for virtually any type of application or backend service without provisioning or managing servers. These capabilities provide unmatched agility for Ancala Midstream. The company is now able to provision new capacity when it needs to add new assets to its infrastructure. It can also scale back assets that are no longer in use. If Ancala Midstream needs to respond to changes in regulations, commercial agreements, or market conditions, it can quickly build and deploy updates across its environment.

Using EnergySys software, Ancala Midstream has access to valuable tools and services that help save time and money. The company can use the low-code environment to develop powerful solutions at a faster pace and a lower cost than building bespoke applications from scratch. Additionally, Ancala Midstream does not need to manage the backend storage, capacity, or security of the cloud infrastructure; EnergySys handles these tasks on behalf of its customers. Instead, Ancala Midstream can dedicate its time to solving business needs, such as meeting new regulatory requirements.

Ancala Midstream has deployed several applications on EnergySys to improve its operational efficiency. For example, it used to manually generate over 1,000 monthly reports in order to deliver valuable data to its employees, shippers, and suppliers. Using EnergySys software, Ancala Midstream built business intelligence dashboards where users can log in, access data, and generate reports. “The biggest improvement that we’ve seen is the way that we can get data to people who need it most,” says Ross Matthews, hydrocarbon accounting lead at Ancala Midstream. “On EnergySys, we can deliver far more information to our shippers and suppliers without needing to send reports.” Using these dashboards, Ancala Midstream has provided a simplified self-service environment for its users to access important data. It has also reduced manual effort for the employees who were previously in charge of generating reports.

Ancala Midstream built a dashboard on the EnergySys platform to track its carbon emissions. Using this application, the company can monitor its progress toward its sustainability goals and strategize ways to reach net-zero emissions. Ancala Midstream’s users can also use the dashboard to monitor their own emissions. “For our users to get to net-zero emissions, we need to understand the impact of our infrastructure,” says Matthews. “The fundamental starting point for achieving this goal is to help our users understand their emissions associated with SAGE.”

Using EnergySys, Ancala Midstream has transformed its business and will work on optimizing its assets to achieve better operational efficiency. EnergySys will continue to be a critical part of the company’s technical infrastructure. “EnergySys has already delivered on several complex commercial agreements that we have been able to implement into the system, and this pattern is only going to continue,” says Matthews. “We’re confident that our new system will be able to handle any future challenges.”