OVERVIEW

Cutlass Energy Partners

Houston-based Cutlass Energy Partners, LLC (Cutlass), is a midstream infrastructure company specializing in identifying and executing midstream infrastructure opportunities predominately in conjunction with crude oil, natural gas, natural gas liquids, and water projects. Its transaction spectrum includes greenfield construction projects, acquisition opportunities, and joint venture relationships seeking to develop, operate, and maintain midstream infrastructure assets.

14-Mile Section

Cutlass contracted Vintri to review, analyze, and enhance records related to PHMSA Traceable, Verifiable, and Complete (TVC) regulations for a 14-mile section of NPS 4 and NPS 8 pipelines. These sections and associated main pipelines were not built by Cutlass and previously owned by multiple operators.

PROJECT TIMELINE

Vintri efficiently completed this project in less than a month in the first quarter of 2021, including minimal time invested by client stakeholders.

CHALLENGES

In engaging Vintri, Cutlass sought to overcome four primary challenges associated with the existing 14-mile section in question:

• Previous asset owners stored all records in a basic FTP (online document repository). When files were transferred to Cutlass’ SharePoint folders, most original record upload dates were lost—making tracking the timelines/provenance of the data much more difficult. In addition, while the folder structures initially appeared to be complete, further exploration determined that many were in fact incomplete or empty.

• Manufacturing records and especially construction records possessed very few unique identifiers, negatively affecting the ability to track materials’ full life cycle traceability—from manufacturing to installation.

• The project’s mainline contained pipe sourced and coated from multiple countries, resulting in crucial data gaps relating to the 14-mile section.

• If this 7-year-old project had been built today, it would have been out of compliance with several regulations, including CFR 49 192.67, 192.607, 192.205, and 192.227—regulatory updates that were introduced in 2021. At time of engagement, Cutlass was exploring opportunities to sell the asset and had previously considered repurposing the two 14-mile pipeline segments as part of a larger project.

THE SOLUTION

To achieve enhanced data integrity and data traceability and improve adherence to regulatory requirements, Vintri’s solution for Cutlass included the following sequential components:

• Discovery

Organized kickoff meetings and communicated project deliverables. Identified and gathered all available relevant data and documentation pertaining to the existing 14-mile section.

• Cataloging

Reviewed material documentation and construction as-builts to confirm completeness of data and to identify data anomalies, the sources of these differences, and gaps.

• Curation

Uploaded available data and documentation into vintriCORE (the Vintri platform) and created contextualized relationships between these assets and their critical TVC documents—producing a common data model for the project.

• Integrity

Delivered examples and a roadmap for data mining of all related material and construction data; provided enhancement of data formatting pertaining to traceability and cross-verification such that engineering conformance, procurement compliance, and regulated traceability can be achieved.

KEY FINDINGS & OUTCOMES

Vintri’s engagement with Cutlass successfully enhanced the data integrity and traceability for the 14-mile section such that:

• Vintri was able to verify that all related records were PHMSA TVC compliant through hydrotest records.

• Documentation and PDFs associated with the section were successfully uploaded and paired with sample Usable data, making the records significantly more accessible.

• This project significantly supported a transfer of assets: soon after the completion of this project, Cutlass successfully sold the asset, which required the shortest period of due diligence process in the history of the company.