How Surge Energy Manages a $263M ARO Portfolio With Matidor
Company: Surge Energy Inc.
Industry: Oil and Gas, Asset Retirement, Remediation and Reclamation
Contact: Annabelle Pires, Supervisor, Asset Retirement
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
See how Matidor works for oil and gas asset retirement teams.
The Company
Surge Energy Inc. (TSX: SGY) is a Calgary-based oil-focused exploration and production company with operations across some of Canada's top conventional oil plays, including the Sparky and Southeast Saskatchewan areas. As of December 31, 2023, Surge had recorded an asset retirement obligation of $263 million, representing a substantial and growing portfolio of well sites, gathering systems, and facilities requiring active closure management.
Overseeing that closure portfolio is Annabelle Pires, Supervisor, Asset Retirement. Her team is responsible for tracking site inventory, managing the stages of closure across multiple geographic areas, coordinating external vendors, and maintaining accurate cost and progress data for reporting and forecasting.
The Challenge
Before Matidor, Surge Energy was managing its asset retirement program through a combination of spreadsheets and another software platform. Neither tool gave the team a complete, accurate view of site inventory or closure stage. Tracking where each location stood in the closure process required constant manual effort, and the lack of a centralized system created compounding operational problems.
The day-to-day impact was significant:
- Duplication of effort as team members worked from separate, inconsistent data sources.
- Time-consuming site assessments due to a lack of reliable baseline information.
- Data errors from manual reconciliation across disconnected tools
- Sites treated as isolated entries rather than geographically related work that could be sequenced and optimized.
- No visibility into how access constraints, travel distances, or overlapping activities affected scheduling and execution
For a team managing a large number of sites at varying stages of closure, the inability to see the portfolio spatially meant work was being planned in a vacuum, with little ability to optimize sequencing, coordinate vendors efficiently, or identify where efforts would have the greatest impact.
Why Matidor
Matidor's GIS-native design matched how Annabelle's team needed to think about the work: geographically. The ability to split sites into portfolios by area, link AFEs to individual locations, track closure stages visually, and coordinate vendors within a single platform addressed the core gaps left by spreadsheets and legacy software.
Annabelle PiresSupervisor, Asset Retirement, Surge Energy Inc.
Matidor's features mapped directly to Surge's needs:
Real-time cost tracking
Centralized project visibility
GIS site mapping
Consultant coordination
Reporting
The Solution in Action
Portfolio Organization by Area and Project Type
Surge Energy organized its full site inventory inside Matidor, splitting locations into portfolios by geographic area as well as special project categories. This structure gave the team a consistent, queryable view of the entire closure program, replacing the fragmented picture that had previously required cross-referencing multiple spreadsheets and software exports.
Map-Based Planning and Sequencing
The shift from spreadsheet rows to a live map fundamentally changed how Surge's team plans and sequences closure work. Rather than treating sites as isolated entries, the team can now see how locations relate to each other geographically, identify access constraints, and understand where overlapping activities could create inefficiencies or conflicts before work begins.
How Geographic Visibility Changed the Order of Work
One concrete example illustrated the impact clearly. When managing a group of sites in the same geographic area at different stages of closure, Matidor's map view allowed the team to visualize site layout and access together, plan the order of work more efficiently, and ensure activities were completed in the right sequence to minimize disruptions.
Budget and Cost Control
Surge Energy links AFEs to individual sites and activities within Matidor, associating costs with specific stages of work. This structure enables the team to monitor spend against each phase of closure and use that data to support forecasting, a significant improvement over the manual spreadsheet processes used previously.
Vendor Coordination and Communication
One of the measurable improvements Annabelle highlighted was the improvement in vendor coordination. With all site data, status, and task information centralized in Matidor, the back-and-forth between Surge's internal team and external vendors became significantly more efficient, reducing the administrative burden that had previously consumed significant time.
Results and Impact
Results and Impact
Real-Time Visibility, Less Admin, Better Decisions
The operational shift was clear and team-wide. Project coordination became more streamlined, site status became accessible in real time, and the ability to plan work spatially unlocked efficiencies that were simply not possible when sites existed only as rows in a spreadsheet.
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About Matidor
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