New and Improved! Permian, Oil Tariff Analytics, EBB Alerting, Project Costs, Quality Engineering, and More

At LawIQ, we are committed to continuously innovating and engineering analytics and answers for our customers!
Once per quarter we devote an Insights to communicating what is new and forthcoming from our engineering, data science, and research teams to deliver value via our Energy analytics platform, biweekly Insights, and customer-driven advisory services. Our customer segments include midstream energy infrastructure developers and operators, upstream shippers, commodity traders and marketers, as well as energy company investors. So, we strive to build features and products covering our segments’ use cases and - most importantly - driven by your feedback!

All-Source Permian Progress Provides an Edge for Commodity Traders, and Competitive Intel for Developers and Shippers

Oil and Gas markets are hyper focused on Permian basin takeaway capacity, so we aimed our capabilities at developing a unique methodology to assess Permian intrastate project commitments and progress, which we, as of April, deliver monthly in a dashboard format. Its project Commitment score and in-service date (ISD) forecasts are based on a fusion of data sources including county-level land records of Right of Way and Condemnation actions, state level permit filings, and satellite imagery.
You can see the Permian Edge’s 16 metrics across four phases applied to Kinder Morgan’s Gulf Coast Express project in Midship's In-Service Data Sailed, is Gulf Coast Express on the Fast Track? We predict an on-time ISD.

Adding Comprehensive Oil Pipeline Tariff and Rate Analytics

To further broaden our LawIQ Energy offering to include more oil pipeline regulatory analytics and Insights, we recently finalized an acquisition of the only data provider specializing in aggregation and analysis of North American pipeline system rate tariffs across crude and liquids commodity types.
This unique analytics provider serves an extensive customer base by acquiring, structuring, and monitoring US, Canadian, and state oil pipeline tariffs between any origin and destination so that operators, shippers, traders, and investors in midstream and downstream markets can easily access cleaned and structured information on rates, uncover publicly disclosed competitive intelligence, optimize asset operations, and evaluate risks inherent in regulatory events and changes. We look forward to integrating new oil tariff and rate analytics into our offering during the second half of 2019.

Total Market Share of Top 14 Oil Pipelines

Aggregated Alerts on Pipeline Transactions for Accurate and Automated Market Intelligence

A popular feature of our platform is our customizable email alerts. An additional alerting feature is now available, which we built in response to customer requests seeking a way to automate and better track pipelines’ electronic bulletin boards (EBB) to assess an aggregate of all transactional activity daily.
Now available in our EBB Transactional Activity (ETA) alerting system is the entire family of Kinder Morgan pipelines (17 total). And, next in our ETA product pipeline is the Williams family, which will be available by year’s end.

Project Cost Analytics for Data-Driven Strategic Sourcing and Contractor Performance Management

In Pennies from Heaven - Rising Costs May Lead to Financing Issues , we noted the most pressing business concern facing project developers is the need to improve permitting and project cost predictability. Consequently, in the beginning of 2019, we released stage one - itemized and exportable past project estimated cost and final reported costs - of our project cost analytics inside our Energy analytics platform, so customers could better conduct and model:

Peer-to-peer benchmarking to support internal estimating
Contractor selection and negotiations informed by prior project performance
Financial modeling of the impact of capex on cash flows
Business development support for developers and contractors

In Q2, we developed the ability to calculate additional unit analytics, such as dollar per inch-mile and dollar per-horsepower, as well as advanced search capability to query by cost line items (e.g., “materials” or “labor”) across all projects.
Next on our roadmap is stage three, integrating project schedule modeling with cost models to provide a window into cost variability during project development, an area without visibility between estimated and final cost reports (almost always a multi-year period). These models will increase transparency and enable project and regulatory teams to revise payback periods, conduct negotiations with shippers, and increase confidence in financial return-on-investment models.

“Quality is Job One”

The slogan made famous by Ford motor company is true for LawIQ, so please permit us to boast a little on our engineering team. Since we launched the LawIQ Energy SaaS platform in October 2015, the cloud-based service has experienced less than one hour of cumulative downtime during over 30 ,0000 hours of service.
Our multi-layer quality assurance system starts with best-in-class cloud infrastructure and network security and includes many purpose-built machine algorithms alongside a human layer that inspects all the data we acquire and transform. We use an agile “scrum” process to release a new system enhancement every two weeks, and we will continue to relentlessly maintain our systems, so you can always trust our team, analytics, and answers.

Recent Customer-Driven Advisory Asks

We enjoy helping customers solve problems and make and save money by diving deep on their specific opportunities or investment decisions related to a project, regulatory issue, or market trend or event, such as modeling permitting schedules and project costs. Here are some recent examples of Advisory Services engagements:

Competitive Analysis - delivered to a pipeline operator a competitive analysis of shipper contract commitments by receipt and delivery points, so they could identify business development opportunities.
Regulatory Risk Assessment - provided an LNG project developer an analysis of reported greenhouse gas emissions by projects in prior FERC Environmental Assessments to help them benchmark and assess regulatory risk.
Project Permitting Prediction - utilized advanced statistical methods to provide probabilistic models of project timing to support a pipeline company’s investment decisions.

Let us know how we can support you!

Insights Coming Soon

Review of regulatory issues contributing to SoCalGas volatility
A look at future rate case trends