Striving for the right allocation: portfolio optimization and uncertainty analysis within the Canadian Oil and Gas sector

Carolina Diaz-Goano, Ph.D., P.Eng.

In a highly volatile market companies are constantly reassessing the value and risk of their assets. In the current lower oil price environment, portfolio optimization and uncertainty analysis has become more relevant than ever. The right allocation of the constrained resources is a key concern for decision makers. This presentation will provide a review of algorithms for portfolios optimization (linear and non-linear constrained optimization) and uncertainty analysis; it will discuss the benefits of perceptual positions and describe how the right tools together with a strategic approach can provide the necessary insights to determine those portfolios that shield in times of low prices, those that scale up fast in a higher price scenarios and most importantly, those that best align with the business goals.

Please join us after the talk for refreshments at the Palomino Smokehouse

109 7th Ave SW, Calgary, AB

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - 

Carolina Diaz-Goano, Ph.D., P.Eng.

Dr. Diaz-Goano has over 20 years of combined academic and industry experience. Before moving to Canada, she worked as a production engineer at a chemical plant, for IBM developing database applications, and was part of a research group dealing with groundwater pollutant transport. After completing her doctoral studies, Dr. Diaz-Goano worked at different national and international research centres, including a post-doctoral term at the Institut Francais du Petrole in France and as an assistant professor at the University of Alberta. Her work focused on CFD, primary oil upgrading and reservoir simulation. Since 2007, she has been working in the energy industry’s private sector, evaluating and developing new technology related to thermal oil recovery, reservoir simulation, reserves, strategic planning and optimization. For the last two years she has been the product manager for esi.portfolio,an analytic platform for evaluating decisions related to oil and gas strategy development, bringing together data (financial and operational) and the business context (business goals, assumptions, constraints, etc.) to address decisions involving risk or uncertainty.

Dr. Diaz-Goano’s areas of expertise include modeling, numerical methods, optimization, data analytics, reservoir simulation and EOR methods. She holds a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering (93) from Universidad de la Republic (Uruguay), a M.Sc. in Computing Science (99) and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering (03), both from the University of Alberta.