Plant Accounting Case Study

Sterling Energy relies on W Energy to accelerate residue gas and NGL plant accounting, ensure meter accuracy, and streamline producer remittance.

About Sterling Energy

Headquartered in Denver, Sterling Energy has provided gas gathering, compression, processing, treating, NGL and natural gas marketing to its customers since 2000.

Ultimately, we were convinced that the experienced and knowledgeable W Energy team could take us to the next level of gas plant accounting allocation and remittance processing.

Chief Financial Officer,
Sterling Energy

Products Offered by W Energy

  • Plant Processing

Areas of Operation

  • Niobrara-DJ Basin

Supported Workflows

  • Monthly Plant Settlement
  • Contracts and Meters
  • Producer remittance

Who Benefits?

  • Operational Accounting
  • Natural Gas and NGL Producers

Inspiration for Change

Growing Operational Complexity

Sterling Energy provides natural gas and NGL producers in the Niobrara-DJ Basin with the infrastructure and services necessary to process and transport their products to market in a safe, timely, and cost-efficient manner.  With 450 miles of gathering pipeline and approximately 9 BCF of annual processing capacity, the midstream service provider has experienced steady growth and serves some of the largest natural gas producers in Colorado.

Remitting Payments to Producers

Sterling Energy relied on a legacy commercial plant accounting product for allocating natural gas and NGL sales back to its processing facilities in order to calculate payments to producers. However, to verify that the commercial software was correctly netting back volumes the company also augmented production allocation with spreadsheets, adding time and complexity to the process.

Meter Management & User Experience

Limitations of its legacy plant accounting software also made it difficult to manage meters and integrate data with other workflows.  As a result, accounting staff were forced to work with multiple screens and datasets.  Sterling Energy wanted to modernize its plant accounting with a unified solution that is capable of reliably settling its 3 processing plants and easy for staff to maintain.

Benefits of W Energy

Best-in-Class SaaS Technology

Sterling Energy replaced its legacy plant accounting solution with W Energy, which offers modern plant processing technology deployed on the cloud and a true software-as-a-service (SaaS) experience.  This includes intuitive plant accounting user interfaces, cost-effective subscription pricing, and continuous upgrades that ensure Sterling Energy is always running on the latest version.

Reliable, Lightning Fast Allocations

W Energy’s cloud-based solution provides high performance computing that reduces time for complex accounting processes from hours to seconds.  Unlike its legacy plant accounting solution, Sterling Energy’s accounting team now rapidly netbacks sales volumes with complete confidence with W Energy, enabling it to remit payments to producers and settle its plants faster.

Ensuring Meter Accuracy

The W Energy plant accounting module provides Sterling Energy with new capabilities to manage meters, allocations, and remittance in one unified solution.  As a result, the midstream service provider eliminates data silos and multiple screens, giving accounting staff the ability to view all required information and meters in a single, consolidated workspace.