In oil and gas, the quantity that leaves the terminal is not the quantity that arrives.
Almost every hard SAP problem in this industry comes back to one fact: hydrocarbons change volume with temperature, they are exchanged between companies that also compete, and the financial record has to keep up with both. Standard SAP does not model that. IS‑Oil does, and testing it is a different exercise from testing a manufacturer.
What makes Oil and Gas different from a standard SAP landscape.
None of this is exotic. All of it is known. It goes wrong anyway, because the test plan is usually written against the process rather than against the way the process actually behaves here.
Quantity is not one number
A movement of crude has an ambient volume, a standard volume corrected to a reference temperature, a mass, and often an energy figure. IS‑Oil carries several of these on the same document and converts between them using conversion groups and density. A test that checks only the quantity field has not tested the movement — it has tested one of four numbers that must reconcile.
Exchange agreements are contracts, not sales
Under an exchange, you lend product at one location and take it back at another, sometimes months later, with differentials and fees settled separately. It is neither a sale nor a stock transfer, and it does not behave like either. Balances accrue, and the reconciliation only reveals itself at settlement — long after any test window closes.
Scheduling and accounting see different events
TSW plans nominations, tickets and movements; the accounting document follows later, sometimes much later, and sometimes for a different quantity once the ticket is finalised. Testing the nomination and testing the posting are two tests, and the interesting failures live in the gap between them.
Terminal and gauging systems sit outside SAP
Loading racks, tank gauging, meters and third-party terminal systems feed SAP through interfaces that are frequently custom. They do not fail loudly. They fail by sending a quantity SAP accepts and posts, which is why the discrepancy surfaces at month-end stock reconciliation rather than at the interface.
Excise, duty and regulatory reporting are configuration
Duty status, bonded movements and jurisdiction-specific reporting are driven by configuration that changes when the business enters a new market. This is one of the few areas where an untested change produces a regulatory consequence rather than an operational one.
The failures that reach production.
Each of these is quiet. Nothing errors, nothing is flagged, and no check that reads configuration would have caught it.
Test data is usually clean, warm and small. Production has temperature swings, partial loads, in-transit volumes and gains and losses. A conversion that reconciles on a hundred documents can drift on a hundred thousand.
An S/4HANA conversion changes the inventory data model. Custom quantity reports built against the old tables keep returning answers — quietly different answers — through compatibility views. Nothing errors.
They span periods, so they rarely fit inside a test cycle. The result is that an exchange defect is usually found by a counterparty, which is the most expensive way to find one.
Where we would put the effort.
Scope is agreed with you before anything starts. This is where we would argue it belongs in Oil and Gas, and why.
Quantity conversion coverage
Every conversion group and density scenario in scope, tested so that ambient, standard, mass and energy figures reconcile on the same document — not just that the document posts.
Movement-to-posting traceability
Nomination through ticket through accounting document, followed as one line, so a quantity that changes on the way through is visible as a finding rather than a rounding.
Interface replay at real volume
Terminal, gauging and meter feeds replayed at production volume and with production message variants, because a handful of happy-path messages proves very little here.
Period-end and reconciliation scenarios
Stock reconciliation, gains and losses, and in-transit valuation run as deliberate test scenarios rather than assumed to work because the individual postings did.
Industry knowledge, stated plainly.
Our exposure to oil and gas comes from Rufouss engagements and from consultants who have spent years in upstream, midstream and downstream SAP landscapes — including hydrocarbon management, trading and the interfaces to terminal automation.
Where we do not have that depth, we say so rather than take work on the assumption we will pick it up as we go. That answer has cost us engagements. It is still the right one, and it is the reason this page lists nine industries rather than thirty.
About SAP quality in Oil and Gas.
Do you need IS‑Oil experience to test an oil and gas SAP landscape?
For the hydrocarbon processes, yes. A tester without it will validate that documents post and miss that the standard volume is wrong, because the document posts either way. For the surrounding processes — procurement, finance, maintenance — strong general SAP testing is enough.
What usually gets missed in an S/4HANA conversion here?
Custom quantity and stock reports built against the pre-conversion inventory data model. They keep returning results through compatibility views, so nothing errors and nothing is flagged — the numbers simply stop agreeing with the system of record.
Can exchange and netting processes be automated for regression?
The transactional steps can. The multi-period settlement usually cannot be automated end to end in a useful way, so it is better handled as a designed manual scenario with real reference data than as an automated script that only proves the first step.
Where this work usually starts.
Take any one of these on its own, or as one stage of a longer arc.
Tell us where your Oil and Gas programme is.
No business case needed, and a straight answer either way — including when the honest answer is that you do not need us yet.