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Compare oilfield job costs by crew, service line and customer using operating and expense exports. Calculate crew, equipment, mobilization and subcontractor costs, allocate shared overhead and reconcile the result to the ledger.
Oil and gas services cost analysis starts by putting crew, equipment, mobilization and subcontractor charges against the job that used them. Compare the resulting cost with the approved budget, then separate extra activity, changed rates and shared-cost allocations before deciding what to fix.
For an oilfield service company, the practical question is whether a crew or service line is consuming more resources than planned. This review concerns the service company's operating costs; broader results belong in oilfield services financial analysis.
Start with completed jobs for a defined reporting period. Keep job ID, customer, service line, crew, location and completion date as grouping fields. Retain source transaction IDs so every summarized amount can be traced to a time entry, equipment log or supplier charge.
Bring these records together through the job ID:
Do not add payroll detail to a ledger labor total that already includes it. Use the detail to distribute and explain that total. The same rule applies when equipment rental invoices already sit in the job ledger.
IRS Publication 538 describes the basic accrual distinction between incurring an expense and paying it. Apply the company's accounting policy when capturing completed-job costs, including supplier charges incurred but not yet invoiced. A payment-date extract alone can leave a finished job looking artificially cheap.
The example is a fictional US oilfield services company reviewing three completed jobs in the same service class. These are management costs in USD, not market benchmarks. The crew's loaded rate and equipment rate are established inputs; all hours have been approved.
Use A:H for the following input columns, with headers in row 1 and jobs in rows 2-4.
| Job | Crew hours | Crew rate (USD/hour) | Equipment hours | Equipment rate (USD/hour) | Mobilization (USD) | Subcontractors (USD) | Budget (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 500 | 42 | 40 | 250 | 5,000 | 4,000 | 42,000 |
| B | 600 | 45 | 50 | 250 | 8,000 | 6,000 | 48,000 |
| C | 400 | 42 | 30 | 250 | 4,000 | 3,000 | 33,000 |
| Total | 1,500 | 120 | 17,000 | 13,000 | 123,000 |
Enter these formulas in I2:K2 and fill them through row 4:
I2 = B2*C2
J2 = D2*E2
K2 = SUM(F2:G2,I2:J2)
Column I is crew cost, J equipment cost and K direct job cost. Job B therefore carries $27,000 of crew labor, $12,500 of equipment cost, $8,000 of mobilization and $6,000 of subcontractors: $53,500 before shared support.
An equipment rate may include depreciation and maintenance for owned assets. IRS Publication 946 explains depreciation as recovering qualifying property cost over its use; tax deductions are a separate schedule from this management allocation. Do not add an equipment purchase payment to a job that already bears a usage charge for the same ownership cost.
For this example, shared field supervision and dispatch total $27,000. Enter that pool in B7. The company allocates it by crew hours because those services primarily support crews. This is an explicit example policy, not a rule for every cost pool.
Add the following columns:
L2 = $B$7*B2/SUM($B$2:$B$4)
M2 = K2+L2
N2 = M2-H2
O2 = IF(H2<>0,N2/H2,"Review")
P2 = IF(B2>0,M2/B2,"Review")
L is allocated support, M full cost, N dollar variance, O variance percentage and P full cost per crew hour. Fill through row 4. A positive variance is unfavorable because actual cost exceeds budget.
| Job | Crew cost (USD) | Equipment cost (USD) | Direct cost (USD) | Support (USD) | Full cost (USD) | Variance (USD) | Variance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 21,000 | 10,000 | 40,000 | 9,000 | 49,000 | 7,000 | 16.7% |
| B | 27,000 | 12,500 | 53,500 | 10,800 | 64,300 | 16,300 | 34.0% |
| C | 16,800 | 7,500 | 31,300 | 7,200 | 38,500 | 5,500 | 16.7% |
| Total | 64,800 | 30,000 | 124,800 | 27,000 | 151,800 | 28,800 | 23.4% |
Support is $27,000 divided by 1,500 crew hours, or $18 per crew hour. Job B receives 600 times $18 = $10,800. Its $64,300 full cost exceeds its $48,000 budget by $16,300. Percentages use each row's budget and are rounded to one decimal place.
The total variance is $151,800 - $123,000 = $28,800. Divide those totals for the overall 23.4%; do not average the job percentages. The allocation check is:
=SUM(L2:L4)-B7
It must return zero. Also prove that $64,800 labor + $30,000 equipment + $17,000 mobilization + $13,000 subcontractors = $124,800 direct cost, then add $27,000 support to reach $151,800. Reconcile each category to the ledger and document any excluded non-job costs.
Job B has the largest dollar overrun. Start with its labor estimate rather than assuming all of the excess reflects wage inflation.
| Job B labor comparison | Hours | Rate (USD/hour) | Cost (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Approved labor estimate | 500 | 42 | 21,000 |
| Actual labor | 600 | 45 | 27,000 |
| Increase | 100 | 3 | 6,000 |
The hours effect is (600 - 500) times $42 = $4,200. The rate effect is 600 times ($45 - $42) = $1,800. Together they explain the $6,000 increase without a residual. Compare travel, standby, rework and scope changes to the approved job record before choosing an action.
Full cost per crew hour is $98.00 for A, $107.17 for B and $96.25 for C, rounded to cents. Those figures flag B for investigation; they do not prove inefficient delivery when scope or operating conditions differ. Review oil and gas services revenue analysis separately when the question is whether extra work was billed.
Operations should confirm hours and scope, procurement should confirm supplier charges, and finance should own the ledger reconciliation and allocation policy. A services cost analysis uses similar labor discipline, while an oil and gas services dashboard can organize the measures for recurring review.
Upload a job-cost file with the crew, equipment, supplier and budget fields retained; Covirage maps the columns, and its tools compute and check the comparisons. The external AI model explains the result with every figure traced to its rows. Create a free Covirage account, which takes about a minute, and bring a sample of your own data.
See cost variance analysis for the supporting cost-control approach.
Include attributable crew labor, equipment use, mobilization, consumables and subcontractor charges. Add a clearly labeled share of support costs for a full-cost view. Keep capital purchases and financing separate from operating charges, and retain the cost policy used for both budgets and actuals.
Choose a driver related to the support being consumed, such as crew hours for shared field supervision or equipment hours for maintenance support. State the cost pool and driver explicitly, allocate the entire pool once, and retain an unallocated category for exceptions.
It is a cost-intensity measure, not a complete productivity measure. A job can have a lower hourly cost while taking more hours to deliver the same work. Compare scope, service type, standby time and completion output before drawing an operational conclusion.
Use the same cost definitions and distinguish completed jobs from work still in progress. Include accrued supplier charges where appropriate, retain the month of the underlying activity, and compare similar service scope rather than treating every job as interchangeable.