SIGMA
Innovators to Achieve US Energy Independence Even Below $60/Barrel of Oil

Born in an oil field in Southern Argentina and growing up in the oil fields of Brazil, the Amazon, Africa and the Saharan Desert, Jorge Machnizh’s formative years with his geophysicist father and his career stints across the continents have exposed him to the multi-cultural environment and the intricacies of the oil and gas industry. An accomplished energy pioneer, Jorge Machnizh, the CEO of SIGMA³, is focused on delivering technologies that support domestic and international oil and gas in their quest to improve performance at the drill bit, most notably in the unconventional reservoirs driving today’s market. “We address today’s oil and gas challenges through our suite of smart GeoEngineering™ technologies and expert services that help operators reduce finding and development costs, increase production, and minimize their environmental footprint,” says Machnizh.

Machnizh points out that the U.S. market has nearly 25 percent of the world’s shale resources, but invests a disproportionate amount to drill and produce it, including roughly $38 billion in hydraulic fracturing services in 2014 on some 500,000 frac stages. “This makes little sense given that more than 85 percent of the global service capacity actually resides in the U.S.,” he says. “It would probably surprise people to know that thousands of these frac stages underperformed or failed–a failure rate as high as 40 percent in some cases.”

Advanced, integrated technologies are required to understand the rock properties that influence oil and gas production and operators are hungry for integrated, efficiency-driven solutions that help them locate the best drilling targets, understand the outcome of hydraulic fracturing activity, and improve the production of each well.

“Imagine the value of being able to predict well production with a high degree of confidence and pinpoint the richest targets before drilling begins, validate the findings in real time, and engineer the wells to deliver the optimum production response,” says Machnizh. “This marriage of disciplines–GeoEngineering– ties geosciences and engineering to production, and is unique to the industry.”

Using CRYSTAL™, a proprietary 3D software tailored for shale, SIGMA³ helps operators maximize ROI by identifying these sweet spots–areas of the reservoir that will yield the best production–so they can drill the optimal number of wells and leverage their trajectories to make the most of the intrinsic properties of the reservoir, including the location and density of natural fractures. The recent integration of geomechanical modeling to the SIGMA³ workflow addresses the propagation of multiple hydraulic fractures with natural fracture networks, enabling even better prediction and better engineered completion techniques.

“Our proprietary software, expert staff and advanced analytics guide oil and gas companies make the best decisions about where to drill and where and how to optimize hydraulic fracturing,” he says.

The company’s measureable impact is visible in their partnerships with large and small oil companies and majors, including international and national entities (IOCs and NOCs), which have long-term sustainable energy policies. Operator sare seeing multi-million dollar incremental production value with better engineering and have saved millions by using SIGMA³ proprietary innovative technology to identify the sweet spot in the shale reservoir, optimize horizontal well trajectories and execute the best completion techniques, ultimately validated by microseismic.

Machnizh is proud of the intellectual capital at SIGMA³ that combines high science with operational excellence to deliver projects on time, budget, and according to specification. The company’s workforce is a blend of multinational, experienced and young talent capable of making decisions quickly in alignment with the customer requirements. “Wrong decisions in this sector create a colossal financial impact and are detrimental to the environment, including waste of water, sand and unnecessary fracking,” warns Machnizh. “The great news is that even in today’s low commodity market, E&P companies can reduce finding and development costs, increase production, and reduce their environmental footprint through intelligent use of efficiency-driven technology and integrated workflows.”