#13 Digital Energy Journal - June 2008

8/9/2019 #13 Digital Energy Journal - June 2008

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June / July 2008 Issue 13

Associate Member

Largest ever full waveseismic survey 529 km2 of China

Intelligent Energy - where we

go from here

High performance computing -persuading your boss to buy it

Doing more with fibre in wells

How StatoilHydro hopes to reduce operating costs by 30%

A new way to detect oil: 5hz passive seismic

Building better structural models


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IO 08 Science and Practice the technologies tointegrate people and work processes

Where Science and Practice meetThis conference is about the methods and tools for integrated operations, today and in the future. The place where science and practice meet.

and reveal recent research results on future IO solutions from leading universities and research laboratories around the world. By contrasting

See: www.ioconf.no

Who should attend?

Topics and sessions IO 08 will highlight aspects of the technologies that integrate people and work processes.

1. Breakthrough processes and technologies for IO challenging traditional practices

2. Experience from other businesses

3. New work processes and enabling technologies in IO

4. Smarter well solutions and better reservoir interfacing

5. Real-time reservoir management and production optimization

7. IO and HSE Risk exposure and solutions for improved safety solutions

4TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON INTEGRATED OPERATIONS IN THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY

TRONDHEIM, NORWAY, 2122 OCTOBER 2008 AND SME INNOVATION FORUM 23 OCTOBER 2008

Partners in the Center for Integrated Operations in the Petroleum Industry:

Cooperating academic partners:

Sponsoring organization education on integrated operations. www.ntnu.no/iocenter

Conference Commitee:

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Contents

Listening for oilSpectraseis of Switzerland is developing a

remarkable new technology, which can spot

oil and gas reserves just by listening to them

IONs Multi-component Seismic in ChinaUS geophysical company ION won a big contract

from Chinese state-owned oil company Sinopec

to conduct seismic exploration using its

multi-component data acquisition equipment

Do it yourself AVO conditioningYou no longer have to send data away to be

processed, before doing AVO analysis with it,

because with SMTs new software you can

do the data processing yourself

14

June / July 2008 Issue 13

June /July 2008 - digital energyjournal

Cox Oil monitoring wells by satelliteUS oil company Cox Oil, which has around 700 wells, is expanding its use of satellitecommunications technology to monitor what is happening remotely

Huawei targets oil and gas industryHuawei, the biggest telecom company in China, believes it has a great telecoms offering for the

oil and gas industry broad knowledge of different technology, and the ability to put together

a system quickly and at lower cost

Digital Energy Journal is a magazine for people

in the upstream oil and gas industry who would

like to keep up to date with the latest industry

IT and communications technology, services,

opinion, practise and lessons learned.

Each issue of Digital Energy Journal print maga-

zine is mailed to 2,000 oil and gas executives,

with a further 500-1000 copies distributed at

trade shows, as well as being downloaded ap-

prox 2,000 times as pdf.

Subscriptions:195 a year for 6 issues. To sub-

scribe, please contact Karl Jeffery on jeffery@d-

e-j.com. Alternatively you can subscribe online

at www.d-e-j.com

Printed by Printo, spol. s r.o., 708 00 Ostrava-Poruba,

Czech Republic. www.printo.cz

Digital Energy Journal213 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9FJ, UK

www.digitalenergyjournal.com

Tel +44 (0)207 510 4935

Fax +44 (0)207 510 2344

EditorKarl Jeffery

[email protected]

Technical editorKeith [email protected]

Consultant writersTracey Dancy, Paras Consulting

Dimitris Lyras, Lyras Shipping

SubscriptionsKarl Jeffery

[email protected]

Advertising salesAlec EganTel +44 (0)207 510 [email protected]

15

Communications

PIDX electronic standards forpurchasing and safetyWe attended the European meeting of PIDX,

the e-business committee of the American

Petroleum Institute, held in April in Paris

StatoilHydros research keepingthings runningStatoilHydro, together with ABB, SKF, Aker

Kvaerner and IBM, have embarked on an

extensive research project to find ways to

get more out of older fields

Tail IO making it workWe interviewed two IBM oil and gas

executives, to ask why they think TAIL IO has

a good chance of success

Sophisticated risk assessmentMaking decisions based on the Net Present

Value does not enable you to take the risks of

different options into account in a very

sophisticated way

The risks of spreadsheetsSpreadsheets are popular, but companies are

taking on risk by letting people use them so

much, because it makes it much harder to

manage data across the organisation

26

41

Exploration and drilling

Oil and gas production

40

3

6

10

36

32

1

Front cover:

Full waveseismic receiversready fordeployment inthe Sichuan

province in China, by US geophysicalcompany ION. This was one of the largest

onshore full wave imaging programs everdesigned, covering 529km2 , with10,400shots and 3,168 live recording stations, and100 million traces of data being acquired(see page 14).

National data repositoriesThere is a growing interest for countries to

set up 'National Data Repositories' of shared

data between government, national and

private companies

Why should collaboration be heldback by people?Are efforts to introduce collaborative tools

being held back by people? By Dimitris Lyras

Calculating the properties of rockHouston company Ingrain has developed

new technology which can calculate the 3D

permeability of rock, by putting a drillbit

sample under a high resolution 3D scanner

12

42

46

47

LeadersIntelligent Energy - what we need nowThe oil and gas industry needs to get better at building working environments which support

creativity, observes Tony Edwards, chair of the program committee for the 2008 Intelligent Energy

conference

Encouraging high performance computingIn a Microsoft survey of people who use or purchase high performance computing in oil and gas,

89 percent said they thought that more ready access to high-performance computing capability

could increase oil and gas production. So why dont they have the computers?

18

16

Palisade - quantifying riskPalisades @Risk decision support tool was

used to assess different strategies for

producing the Alvheim field

Quantify your valuable flowThere is a growing increase in interest in

super accurate oil and gas flowmeters, which

can be used to make sure who are not

paying too much for what you are getting

Sensornet doing more with your fibreDownhole fibre optic monitoring specialist

Sensornet claims to be able to install fibre

optic Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS)

monitoring systems which are faster and

more sensitive than alternatives

SEAFOM promoting fibre optics insubseaA new association, SEAFOM, has been

established to promote fibre optic

monitoring in subsea applications.

A new subsea valveUK engineering company Camcon has

developed a new energy efficient valve,

which can run for many years without

changing the battery

22

29

31

Paradigm a new way to build structural modelsGeosciences software company Paradigm has developed a new way to build structural models of

reservoirs, which produces much better models in less time

44

45


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There was a lot of coverage of collabora-tive working environments in the 2008 In-telligent Energy Conference, 15 papers,compared to about 4 papers at the 2006event, observes Tony Edwards, chair of the2008 Intelligent Energy conference pro-gram committee.

This probably reflects the increase ininterest in collaborative working environ-ments, and also the challenges many com-

panies are having with them.The leading companies are close to

supporting all of their production anddrilling operations with real time supportcentres, he observes.

However many companies havetripped up by focusing their efforts on thehardware rather than the people who useit, and ended up building centres whichhave never been used properly.

5 years ago, the emphasis was on thereal time technology and the data and in-

formation and the rooms, he says.Everybody got fixated.

There was very much an if we buildit they will come attitude and of coursethey didnt come.

In 2006 you would quite typicallyhear people say were going to imple-ment a collaborative working environment

and well get people in different disci-plines but were not going to change theorganisation, he says. They ended upwith a team that had five different teamleaders on a project, and five different setsof performance indicators.

Now co-ordinated change manage-ment is given a much higher priority, hesays.

2008 event attendanceThe overall attendance of the 2008 Intelli-gent Energy conference was 1665 people,roughly twice as many as 2006, 65 per centof which from Western Europe and 14 percent from North America, 8 per cent fromthe Middle East and 1 per cent from

Africa.30 per cent were from International

Oil Companies, 10 per cent from NationalOil Companies, 6 per cent from Independ-ent Oil Companies, and the remainder ven-

dors from service companies, contrac-tors, consultancies, and other vendors.

Dr Edwards says he is particularlypleased by the participation of NationalOil Companies in the 2008 Intelligent En-ergy conference. The number and qualityof papers we got NOCs like Petrobras andSaudi Aramco was a big change from2006, he says.

Dr Edwards is also particularly

pleased by the percentage of attendeesworking for oil companies 46 per cent when typically oil and gas industry eventshave only 25 per cent of attendees work-ing for oil companies, he estimates.

We set out to build on the success ofthe one in 2006 and be quite innovativein what we did and I think we were large-ly successful, he says. Its probably thenumber 1 global event in this area now in terms of size and diversity.

Change managementThere was increasing discussions at the2008 Intelligent Energy conference aboutchange management, and how much atten-tion needs to be given to it.

I would say that the companies thata really being successful are looking at In-telligent Energy implementations as atransformation projects rather than an in-formation management project, he says.

The companies that have focused onovercoming resistance to change andtook a very people centric approach, havedone well.

Conversely, if you get the technolo-gy right, and the process right, but the peo-

ple dont want it, youll probably fail.Companies are realizing that there is

a lot more to change management thansimply deciding to do change managementand hiring consultants. Indeed, many com-

panies are thinking about changing theirentire organisations and how they seethemselves, so they are better suited forcontinuous change.

It makes sense to recruit people whoare perhaps more able to cope with achanging working environment, and canquickly develop healthy working relation-ships with people of different ages, back-

grounds, nationalities and time zones.

Oil and gas companies may also needto stop seeing themselves as central con-trol type organisations although deci-sions about where to drill may have alwaysgone through company headquarters, theemployees around the world see them-selves as more independent than the com-

pany managers would like to admit. Deci-sions will be made by the most appropri-ate people in the future, regardless of their

physical location.Companies thought they were a stan-

dardised central technology push companywhen they were actually an independentasset company, he says. This has causeda lot of difficulty in implementing the in-telligent energy projects

Pushing a standard approach fromthe centre can be very difficult, he says.The people on the assets resisted the pushfrom the centre by saying that wont workhere.

There is also perhaps a clearer under-standing of why change management is sohard. Oil and gas companies might be ask-

ing people to do things which are very dif-ficult.

It is one thing for a group of petrole-um engineers to work closely together, andfor people on a platform to work closely

Intelligent Energy where we go from hereWe interviewed Tony Edwards, chair of the program committee of the Intelligent Energy conference(Amsterdam, Feb 25-27), to find out where he thinks the industry is going with Intelligent Energy, and

what he would like to see at the 2010 conference.

Leader

3June/July 2008 - digital energyjournal

The companies that have focused onovercoming resistance to change have donewell - Tony Edwards, chair of the programcommittee for the 2008 Intelligent Energyconference


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together. But asking petroleum engineersto work closely together with people onthe platform is something else entirely.

One could be highly educated Phdcommunity, the other isnt, often theydont have too much in common, they canspeak different technical language, he

says.If youre trying to install videocam-eras on the rig floor, and get guys on the

beach to talk to each other, what youre ac-tually doing is putting two communitiestogether.

Then if you do that across multipletimezones that makes it more difficult.

Actually, the more multidiscipline itis, the more different types of community,the higher proportion of management ofchange youve get to do to be success-ful.

Another problem is the fact that mostsenior staff in oil and gas companies havean engineering background, and used totaking an engineering approach to prob-lems, and most interested in engineeringchallenges. Hardly the best people youwould want to have to run a change man-agement project.

Were all engineers were all intothe techy bits, he says.

Young people skills

Oil and gas companies are slowly startingto recognise that young people coming in-to the industry already have a range ofhighly valuable skills, which their bossesdont have, he says.

If you look at what young people aredoing in World of Warcraft one personadvertises for a team, the team submits in-terviews, he might interview the team, hethen goes through a project, they talkabout how they are going to go through thechallenge, then they go an execute it in avisual environment while theyre talkingto each on headphones.

They talk to each other on 3 conti-nents and they never met each other be-fore.

Its not so different to planning awell. The young people will come into ourindustry with a lot of capabilities and com-

petences to do all of this stuff naturally.The question is, can we attract those

kids into the industry.

Creativity

Oil and gas companies are realizing thatmany of their most important jobs need agreat deal of creativity to do well andfurthermore, if companies want highlymotivated, creative people, they need tocome up with working environments

which support it, he says.A lot of the subsurface processes are

very creative.We are all familiar with how highly

creative companies, such as a advertisingagencies, structure and motivate their em-

ployees, with relaxed, secure, sociable

working environments, without a greatdeal of rules, in exciting city centres. Thisis a long way away from your typical oiland gas working environment.

Oil and gas companies can start bytaking a more sensitive approach to inter-nal controls, automation and regulation automating the more boring tasks, and giv-ing creative people more freedom in theircreative tasks.

We should be automating theprocesses which are repetitive, relativelylow value and simple to automate, in the

way the banking industry has we dontdo enough of that, he says.

But if we standardise processes attoo low a level we inhibit that creative

process amongst those people and thenwe lose value.

There are processes which should bestandardised and mandated but theyshould be the ones very vital to running thecompany, such as health and safety, andasset integrity.

2010 eventSo what can we expect to see at the nextIntelligent Energy Conference, in 2010?

Dr Edwards says he would like to seemore discussions about how intelligenttools can help improve safety, particularlymonitoring the integrity of wells, helpingreduce the number of miles people need todrive, and monitoring the exact location of

personnel.There were very few papers in the

area of asset integrity and safety, he says.Being as thats such an important area its surprising theres not more going on inthat area.

The control and instrumentationcommunities were underrepresented at the2008 event they have a huge part to playin this, because they are the ones who de-signed our new facilities and platforms.

The engineering design houses alsowerent there too much at the 2008 event.We need to get them onboard on where in-telligent energy is working to make surewe get these approaches built into the de-

sign.Dr Edwards has some other ideas

about the 2010 event. I would like to seeone of the big oil and gas companies con-struct an environment on the exhibitionfloor and do work from it, he says.

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High performance computing persuading your boss to buy itIn a Microsoft survey of people who use or purchase high performance computing in oil and gas, 89percent said they thought that more ready access to high-performance computing capability couldincrease oil and gas production. So why dont they have the computers?

We all know that computers are getting fasterand faster - every new computer we buy isfaster than the last one.

However Microsoft believes that manyoil and gas companies are still not spendingas much on high performance computing asthey could be, to take advantage of softwaretools which can run the same data many

times to come up with the best possible mod-el of the subsurface from the input dataavailable.

As Digital Energy Journal readers willbe well aware, better subsurface models leadto more reliable decisions about where todrill, more reliable assessments of the avail-able reserves and future production rates,

better management of the field over its life-time and less wasting of peoples time.

In the past, high performance comput-ers meant multimillion dollar mainframes.

But it doesnt any more. You can buy a rackof cluster computers from a standard hard-ware vendor like Dell, install Microsoft Win-dows HPC Server 2008, and then everyonein the workgroup can queue jobs to it fromtheir desk.

50 per cent a year increaseMark Ades, Microsofts oil and gas high per-formance computing expert, suggests that asa benchmark, companies should be increas-ing their computing processor power by 50

per cent a year, equivalent to the 50 per centyear which they are currently growing theirdata storage capacity.

In its survey of people who use or buyhigh performance computing in oil and gas,89 percent of respondents said that moreready access to high-performance comput-ing capability could increase oil and gas pro-duction, up from 81 percent in a similar sur-vey Microsoft made 2007.

(More specifically, 51 per cent saidthey agreed and 38 per cent said somewhatagree. 6.8 per cent said somewhat disagree

and no-one said they completely disagreed).40 percent said that drilling is often de-

layed because of the time it takes to performthe required computations.

Meanwhile 36 per cent of people saidtheir technical computing budget had in-

creased by over 10 per cent since 2007, and36 per cent said it had increased by between1 and 10 per cent.

When asked if they had immediate ac-cess to the computing power they need to dotheir jobs, only 5.3 per cent completelyagreed and 44 per cent said they somewhatagreed.

44 percent admitted that they some-times make business decisions before com-

pleting sufficient data analyses.61 percent reported that having the ca-

pability to run additional tasks and iterationswould reduce project risk.

47 percent said they lack the process-ing power on their desktop to complete com-

pute-intensive workloads in a timely man-ner.

There are unlimited numbers of areasin oil and gas that have applications that

can take advantage of Windows HPC Server2008, the successor to Windows ComputeCluster Server, says Mr Ades.

This includes seismic data processing,rock physics, stratigraphic analysis, geologi-cal modeling, seismic interpretation andreservoir simulation, production planningand optimization, uncertainty management,equipment optimization, and risk manage-ment.

CostsThe costs of high performance computingare low enough that they should not really

be a factor companies need to consider, sug-gests Craig Hodges, U.S. energy and chemi-cals industry solutions director at Microsoft.

Really the monetary outlay from thecompanies is really not a huge issue like itused to be when you had to buy those bigmachines in the past.

I was at one of the major oil and gascompanies they had a $6bn budget fordrilling, says Mr Ades. We were talkingabout high performance computing as just a

rounding error in that budget its not evena monetary discussion around it they wantto get the compute power to get the jobdown.

You can get a lot of compute powerfor very little money these days I dont see

that the price of thehardware is a limit-ing factor anymore. The price ofthe software is nota limiting factor ei-ther.

Nobody likes

outspending their budget, but itseems that many ITdepartments aretrying to save theoil and gas equiva-lent of pennies ontheir IT budget, andlosing the oil and gas equivalent of pounds

by not having the right data when they needit to make big decisions.

Running multiple iterationsOne advantage of having high performancecomputers readily available is that you canrun many more iterations (i.e. running thecalculation with slightly different input val-ues to see if you get better results, or a mod-el which more closely matches all of the da-ta available to date).

It generally isnt possible to know inadvance how many iterations are worth run-ning whether your first result is the best re-sult you are ever going to get, or if you canget something better. But of course, once youhave run another iteration and received a bet-ter result, you know it was worthwhile.

In the survey, 60 per cent of respon-dents thought that if they had the computing

power available to run more iterations, theywould probably end up with better ultimateresults, leading to reduced risk.

However, it is easy to imagine that itmight be hard to persuade someone to buymore computing power, so you can run moreiterations, without being absolutely sure itwill lead to better results.

However, high performance computingis getting so cheap that companies should notneed to have an in-depth answer of the re-turn on investment before they make the in-vestment, Mr Hodges suggests.

Tiny improvements in the geological

Companies should beincreasing theircomputing processor

power by 50 per cent ayear - Mark Ades,Microsoft

Leader

digital energyjournal - June/July 2008


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models will lead to much more reliable de-cision making, leading to optimized produc-tion and optimized use of peoples time and the benefits of this, or even the possibil-ity of benefits of this, can surely justify theinvestment?

A computer on every deskWe have all heard of Bill Gates vision whenhe founded Microsoft of a computer onevery desk and in every home.

The new equivalent Microsoft vision ishigh performance computing for every oiland gas geoscientist and engineer.

High performance computing can nowgo mainstream, says Mr Hodges. Itsmuch less complicated than it was before.

One of the challenges is changing themindset that high performance computing issomething that can only be done in special-

ist centres, as it has been done in oil and gasfor 30-40 years (indeed, the oil and gas in-dustry was one of the original pioneers ofhigh performance computing).

It takes time for the industry to evolveand change and recognise new computingcapabilities and models, says Mr Hodges.

Microsoft is driving awareness thatyou dont have to be a specialist to do HPCnow, says Mr Ades.

A lot of these end users are so accus-tomed of having the pain of having the job

running slow on their own workstations.They have gotten used to it and are recentlyexploring new HPC opportunities, says MrAdes.

Managing the jobsMicrosoft suggests that companies, or divi-sions in companies, line up their high per-formance computing jobs similar to the wayyou line up jobs for the printer.

We are all quite happy sharing a printerwith our colleagues in most of our offices,we dont have our own personal laser print-er, but we dont have to use the print shopdown the road either. We have a printerwhich we share with our colleagues.

Similarly, it is probably a waste of re-sources for people to have their own privatehigh performance computer, but it is proba-

bly plausible for a small group of geologists,or other high performance computer users,to have a high performance computer just fortheir group.

There have been some proposals thatcompanies can pool all of their computers,

whether they are used for e-mail, accountingor graphic design so that a high perform-ance job can take advantage of their process-ing power, when the computers owner is notusing it to its full capacity.

Microsoft is considering this capability

for future re-leases.

Setting it upTo set up yourown high per-formance com-

puter, you firstdecide howmuch memoryand processor

power youwant, then buysome rackservers from astandard hard-ware vendorsuch as Dell(costing starting around USD 2900 per node)and plug it all in.

The industry calls this network com-modity hardware making a differentiationwith the multimillion dollar mainframe com-

puters which used to be used for high per-formance computing.

And here comes Microsofts businessangle the company produces softwarewhich can make it easy to build and run yourown high performance computer, called Mi-crosoft Compute Cluster Server 2003 (short-ly to be superceded by a new product, Win-dows High Performance Computing Server

2008).Both Microsoft Compute Cluster Serv-

er and HPC Server can manage lots of com-puting jobs on the cluster, either sequential-ly or in parallel.

You keep your computer cluster run-ning 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and userscan submit jobs to it from their desktop PC.

The software has wizards which walkyou through the process and automaticallyinstall the necessary drivers. Its easy tomanage, says Mr Ades. We have our ownadministrative tools built in to monitor andmanage the cluster. Its very Windows-esque

it looks like a familiar environment.

SurveyThe survey was conducted by the Oil andGas Journal Online Research Center duringFebruary 2008.

Over 200 people responded, of which75 per cent were end users of high perform-ance computers.

The other 25 per cent are people whoevaluate, recommend and authorize techni-

cal computing hardware and software pur-chases; technical support staffers; applica-tion managers; and developers.

Over half of the respondents spend overa quarter of their time on high performancecomputing, and 38 per cent of them spend

over 40 per cent of their time on high per-formance computing.

69 per cent of respondents work for oiland gas companies, of which 85 per centwork in international and national oil com-

panies. The remainder worked in consulting,construction / engineering, oil field service,equipment / supply companies, drilling con-tractors or academia.

41 percent of compute-intensive scien-tific applications running on a cluster takefrom overnight to a week to run, respondentssay, up from 25 percent last year.

53 percent say their compute-intensive

scientific applications require four or moreiterations to reduce uncertainty.

At the same time, 26 percent say theoptimal number of iterations to increase their

productivity is more than eight.When asked how they do high perform-

ance computing tasks, 47 per cent said theydo it on a desk side computer cluster, 22 percent on a department cluster and 7.5 per centat a company computing centre.

When asked if they have to wait toolong for jobs when they are being run by out-side high performance computing contrac-tors, 28.9 per cent said they agreed.

When asked if using and maintainingseparate workstations for technical work andcompany business is cumbersome, 28.9 percent agreed.

When asked if they would like to runmore tasks and iterations than time allows 36.3 per cent agreed.

When asked if they have access to thecomputerised visualisation tools that theyneed 51.1 per cent said they did not.

Full survey results are available at:http://www.microsoft.com/in-

dustry/manufacturing/oi-

landgas/businessvalue/hpc-

survey.mspx

High performance computing can do so much to help improve decisionmaking, shouldnt everyone have access to it?

Leader

7June/July 2008 - digital energyjournal


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Exploration and drilling news

TerraSpark launches Insight Earth

www.terraspark.com

TerraSpark Geosciences has launched a newsuite of interpretation software called InsightEarth, which includes tools for automated faultextraction, surface wrapping and domaintransformation, to improve geoscientists seis-

mic interpretation results.It was launched at the recent 2008 Amer-ican Association of Petroleum Geologists(AAPG) Annual Convention and Exhibitionin San Antonio (April 20-23).

It has modules for data and visualisationmanagement (Insight Earth Base); structuralgeometry interpretation (Insight Earth Struc-ture); Stratigraphic feature analysis (InsightEarth Stratigraphy) and principal surface ex-traction (Insight Earth Model).

Petris and Intervera partnership planswww.petris.com

www.intervera.com

Oil and gas software company Petris Technol-ogy and data quality company Intervera DataSolutions plan to form a strategic partnership,connecting their tools together.

Users will be able to use PetrisWINDSEnterprise system to consolidate data from dif-ferent sources, together with Interveras ex-

ploration and production data quality tool, toautomatically check and correct the data.

Using the two technologies together has

been trialled so far on a number of industrydata stores, including the PetrisWINDS Recalldatabase, for well bore data.

Ikon Science appoints new boardmemberswww.ikonscience.com

Ikon Sciencehas appoint-ed two newdirectors toits board:

Nick Pillaras opera-tions direc-tor and An-drew Paxtonas financedirector.

Mr Pil-lar is re-sponsible forthe integrat-ed opera-tions of the RokDoc software development

and Quantitative Interpretation groups. Hewas previously chief geophysicist at Ikon Sci-ence, and before that chief geophysicist at En-terprise Oil.

Mr Paxton was previously finance direc-tor of Intrepid Energy.

Paradigm releases GOCAD version 2.5.2

www.pdgm.com

Paradigm has released version 2.5.2 of its GO-CAD geophysics software.

The new release has new modules 2-DRestoration and 3-D Restoration, which can beused to help create coherent geologic interpra-

tions, when 3D seismicdata is scarce.There is a new Finite Element Mesh Con-structor, which can build tetrahedral meshes foruse in 3D restoration (as an alternative to stan-dard cubic or cuboid meshes).

There is a new Reservoir Risk Assesmentapplication, which can speed up reservoir un-certainty analysis.

INT releases INTViewer 3.0www.int.com

INT has released a new version of its geologyand geophysics workflow-based data visualiza-

tion tool, called INTViewer 3.0.INT says that the software makes it easy

for users to analyse, document and capture livegeoscience data, and share visualisations of it,without advanced training.

The software works on multiple operatingsystems and has an open, extendable architec-ture that makes it possible for users to customisethe visualization framework to match specificworkflow needs using third-party and propri-etary plug-ins and utilities.

Excelsior uses Paradigms consulting inAlbertawww.pdgm.com

Excelsior Energy has decided to use ParadigmsStrategic Consulting services for developmentof its oil sands resource play, in the Athabascaoil sands region of Alberta, Canada.

Paradigm will provide seismic processing,reservoir characterization, and resource and un-certainty assessment solutions to Excelsior forits Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD)

projects.The area is considered to have very com-

plex rock structures, which makes creating geo-logical models very difficult to create.

For the job, Paradigm will use its GOCADsoftware for geological modelling and uncer-tainty assessment, and CRAM, a tool for seis-mic processing, among other tools.

Geotechnical archiving companies joinforceswww.enigmadata.com

www.netapp.com

Oil and gas data specialist Enigma Data Solu-

tions has made its PARS geotechnical dataarchiving solution compatible with NetApp's

NearStore VTL (virtual tape library) appliances.This means that oil companies can archive

their data with modern storage systems, but stillbe able to use their legacy system.

Using NetApps VTL, seismic data tapescan be stored on disk, and accessed as thoughthey were very fast physical tape.

The VTL has been combined with Enig-ma's I/O layer (IDS), so that a fast local VTLappliance can be mirrored at a purpose built, off-site tape storage facility for long term storage.

Until now, a typical archiving systemwould archive two copies of data to tape media.One copy would remain at the client site, whilethe other copy would be taken off-site to a longterm storage facility.

The interface was tested with major oil andgas software applications such as LandMark'sSeisWorks, OpenWorks and CDA, and Schlum-

berger's GeoFrame.

GGS-Spectrum expands into Chinawww.ggs-spectrum.com

Seismic data

processingcompanyGGS-Spec-trum has setup a Chineseoperation,GGS-Spec-trum Interna-tional OilTechnology,

based in Bei-jing.

The of-fice manageris KatieZhaou, who has 20 years experience in seismicdata processing and project management, main-ly with geophysical service contractor BGP.

The Chinese office is providing onlinesupport to GGS data processing centres inHouston, London, Cairo and Tripoli.

M-I SWACO signs license agreement forRFID technologywww.iiitec.com

Drilling solutions company M-I SWACO has li-censed RFID (radio frequency identification)technology from iiiTEC, to use to managedownhole equipment.

Downhole valves will be opened andclosed by passing a radio tag on the drillbit pastthem rather than connecting them to the surfacewith a hydraulic (liquid flow) line, under the cur-rent practise.

The technology has already been trialledin the North Sea.

The technology was developed and patent-

ed by Marathon Oil Company.It makes it possible for valves to be set to

choke the flow (ie open midway), rather thanjust have two possible settings, open and closed,as is the case with conventional hydraulicvalves.

The office of GGS Spectrumsnew Chinese operation



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Paradigm has developed a new softwaretool, called SKUA (Subsurface KnowledgeUnified Approach), which, it believes, en-ables geoscientists to put together much bet-ter earth models more quickly, which, inturn, can be used to perform much betterreservoir calculations.

SKUA addresses a problem with theconventional way structural models are cur-rently put together using a series of 2D and

1D operations. In SKUA, operations are per-formed synchronously in 3D space to ensureintegrity of data and consistency of outputresults.

To explain:The conventional way of constructing

structural models involves connecting thetop and base of horizontal layers with pillars,resulting in 3D grids of data that ultimatelywill be populated with a variety of rock andreservoir properties.

Where faults are present in these rocklayers, the pillars need to be aligned withthem.

Pillars are placed at regular distancesconnecting together the tops and bottoms of2D horizontal layers, creating a model whichis built up of cells (blocks).

This is a long and tedious process,which is normally done manually; it also in-volves a lot of fudging, or effort to force thedata to fit the pillar model, when things donot quite fit. This is particularly the casewhen attempting to model layers with com-

plex fault intersections.When the model is run through a com-

puter program (for example, to extrapolatewell log information outwards away from

the well), the assumption is made that all ofthe cells are the same size, and the walls areall either vertical or horizontal, and parallelwith each other.

This is a reasonable assumption if thereare no faults in the model, or if the pillars

can follow the path of the faults, and thefaults are close to vertical.

However, this is not a reasonable as-sumption if the fault paths are complex, suchas with Y faults (two faults joining together,for example see Figure 2) and with othercomplex fault styles found in many de-formed rocks.

In such cases, the modeled cells canend up a long way away from being equally

sized (see image figure 3), and if you assumethat they are, subsequent calculations (e.g.volumetrics) that make use of the cell, inter-

polated values can be quite misleading andincorrect.

For example, when you are making cal-culations on the size of reservoir sand bod-ies, these calculations are made based on as-sumptions of true distance separation (e.g.100m) at the time of deposition.

When the cells have been abnormallystretched or squeezed from the original de-

positional state (e.g. 10 meters) to the pres-ent day geometry (e.g. 2 meters), the sand

body in the present time is then sized at 20meters instead of 100 meters.

Also, when faults are not vertical andgrid cells are aligned along the fault planes,calculations involving gravity flow will bein error if the calculation is performed on the

basis that liquid will flow vertically frompoint A to point B, when in fact the liquidwill flow from point A to somewhere else en-tirely.

Paradigm a new way to buildstructural models

The Paradigm solutionParadigms solution is to construct a sub-surface model of the earth in three dimen-sions from the outset.

Part of this three dimensional solutionis to provide the modeling program infor-mation about how the rock layers were de-

posited.For every rock layer, as well as pro-

viding XYZ information about the locationof the different features, the system assignsa dimension T (geochronological time) forwhen the rock layer was deposited, and ageographic coordinate UV at the time (T)of deposition.

With all of this spatial information(XYZ) where UVT are known, it is mucheasier to make computer calculations aboutwhat is happening in the reservoir and how

Geosciences software company Paradigm has developed a new methodology to build reservoir modelswhich can greatly impact the way geoscientists work.

Figure 1 2d layers connected together withpillars

Figure 2 - Fault Rift System with ComplexFaulting

Figure 3 - Top: Deformation of Distances Between Reservoir Top/Bottom Induced by PillarGridding (Oppositely Dipping Faults Example)Bottom: Deformation of Distances Between Reservoir Top/Bottom Induced by Pillar Gridding(Y Fault Example)



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the properties are likely to vary in the reser-voir (geostatistics).

BenefitsThe software provides the biggest benefitswhen modelling highly complex structures

that could not be modeled well using theprevious technology.The software was launched in 2008,

and everybody is amazed with the results,says Jean-Claude Dulac, executive vice

president and chief architect with Paradigm.Long time geomodelers are claim-

ing that they are able to perform modelingoperations that they were unable to do be-fore.

You get a better representation of thesubsurface, and you dont have to deformthe model to make use of it for subsequent

reservoir calculations, he said.We used to fit the earth to the tool.

With SKUA, we can model the subsurface

honoring the integrity of the available da-ta.

Paradigm estimates that with the newsystem, it can reduce the amount of time tomodel a complex environment (e.g, 51faults, three thin beds and 12 horizons),

from months to days, or reduce the amountof time to model a thrust with 30 differentfaults from days to hours.

If you can make models more quickly,then many more things become possible.For example, you can create different mod-els of the subsurface for different scenar-ios, and then see which one is the best.

You can also run more history match-es (compare the actual historical reservoirdata to what the model thinks would havehappened).

Ultimately, you can get a better and

faster idea of the subsurface, which shouldlead to more productive wells and fewer dryones.

Better Flow simulationHaving a better geological grid means thatthe accuracy of reservoir flow predictionsthrough simulation will be improved. The ge-ological grid is available to compute volu-metrics i.e. how much oil is thought to ex-

ist in a certain location. The reservoir simu-lation grid is passed through a flow simula-tor to provide insight into how fluids willflow in the subsurface once production starts.

Reservoir simulation grids typicallyhave a much lower resolution than geologi-cal grids, with cells of 50-100 metres, andabout 1 million cells in total, compared tothe geologic grid with cell sizes of ten feet(3m) and about 100 millions cells in total. InSKUA, reservoir simulation grids can be au-tomatically computed (upscaled) from thegeologic grid through this unified volumet-

ric approach, ensuring accuracy and consis-tency in modeling when moving between thetwo domains.

Listening for oilSpectraseis of Switzerland is developing a remarkable new technology, which can spot oil and gasreserves just by listening to them.

Imagine, a way of finding oil and gas re-serves by from the noise they make.

It sounds too good to be true, and Ok,it is.

But the truth is that Swiss companySpectraseis has developed technology basedaround 2003 University of Zurich research,showing with a fair degree of certainty thatmany reservoirs give off very weak seismicwaves of 0.05 to 5 hertz (waves per second).

The research also showed that thickeroil columns can create stronger waves (with

bigger amplitudes).No-one knows for certain the physical

mechanism behind this phenomenon.The leading theory is that they are a res-

onance of the 0.12 to 0.13 Hz waves whichecho around the whole planet, caused by theinteraction between the ocean and the earth,also called Ocean Wave Pak (OWP) whichhave been known about for some time.

One of the theory is that these OWPshake the reservoir very slowly. It gets the

hydrocarbons blobs inside the reservoir toresonate, and then remit a signal that can beheard at the surface in the 2-4 Hz range,suggests Brice Bouffard, vice president,sales and marketing with Spectraseis.

But it does not really matter what the

source of the wave is. Theimportant thing is that thelow frequency signals have

been observed coming out ofunderground hydrocarbondeposits, and can be used tohelp find hydrocarbon de-

posits, or work together withother sources of informationto collectively improve theunderstanding of the likeli-hood that oil is there, beforedrilling.

Spectraseis does notpromise to offer technologywhich can suddenly make itobvious where all the oil-fields are, but it does provideinformation which companies can add to themix.

So, for example, if oil and gas compa-nies use seismic surveys to identify wherestructural traps might exist, they can also use

a passive seismic survey from Spectraseis toget a better idea about whether or not the trapstill holds oil.

Not all oilfields emit seismic waves,and sometimes there are seismic waves ofthis frequency which have not been emitted

by an oilfield.Were not making the claim to be able

to find all the oil in the world. What wereaddressing is some of the challenges youhave with existing seismic survey, says

Ross Newman, CEO.Theres a lot of information in this do-

main that has the potential to dramaticallyimprove the chances of finding oil, he says.

You could say, that if seismic technolo-gy was perfect, you could use it to create a

Spectraseis - listening to 0.05 to 5 hertz passive seismic wavesfrom the oilfield, in Voitsdorf, Upper Austria


15/52

13


June/July 2008 - digital energyjournal

completely accurate, detailed picture of thesubsurface; but seismic technology is not

perfect, so you cant. Similarly if this tech-nology was perfect, you could find out ex-actly where oil and gas deposits are beforeyou drill, but its not perfect, so you cant.But by using several imperfect techniques

together, you can get a much clearer pictureof the likelihood of oil.The industry still only has a 40 per cent

success rate with the wells it drills, and witha much lower success rate with wildcatwells, points out Mr Newman.

It is also worth noting that the environ-mental impact of monitoring for oil in thisway (passive seismic) is much less thanconventional seismic, because you dontneed to create any artificial seismic sources(vibrations or explosions).

This also makes it much cheaper to ac-

quire data.StatoilHydro used the technologies for

a number of surveys. It has done a survey forPEMEX, and another study in the Saudidesert. Shell has experimented with the tech-nology.

Other customers include Ecopetrol,EniRepsa, Kuwait Oil Company and twoSaudi Aramco joint ventures.

We also believe that in general the in-dustry is a bit cautious in trying new tech-nology, says Mr Bouffard. We are ab-

solutely looking for people to help us to re-lay our excitement of this technology.

It was used on a survey with Austrianoil company RAG, where it provided infor-mation which was confirmed by the compa-nys first successful oil well in 10 years, 5kmnorth of an existing producing area, where itultimately found a 32m thick oil zone.

Petrobras tested the technology by ask-ing the company to survey a known complexfield in 2004, and it revealed two of the pro-ducing zones and partly revealed a third.

PEMEX tested the technology in itsBurgos basin, covering an area of 200 squarekilometers, and found that there were lowfrequency seismic waves related to the pres-ence of hydrocarbons.

You can use it offshore, as well. A 14day pilot survey was conducted with Statoil-Hydro on a proven oil field in the North Seain April 2007, using receivers on the ocean

bottom (which were later recovered), alsowith the help of Scripps Institution ofOceanography, and Bergen Oilfield Servic-es.

How to do itIn the general workflow, Spectraseis suggeststhat the technology could be used both rightat the beginning (looking at large areas ofland to identify areas of greater potential,

suitable for further research), or right at theend (when decisions are close to being madeabout where to drill, the tool can be used tohelp rank the different options). It could also

be used to explore areas next to known oil-fields.

Spectraseis provides the results as sur-face digital maps, showing the likelihood ofoil in different places, which can be loadedinto the oil companies earth models or re-viewed on their own. In some cases, it can al-so provide 2D depth sections using the Re-

verse Time Modeling techniqueThe survey does not use geophones, be-

cause they dont work at frequencies of un-der 4-5hz.

It uses off the shelf broadband sensorsdeveloped for use in earthquake monitoring.They are which are much more sensitive thana geophone.

Here, the company uses the term broad-band to signify the width of the frequencyband being detected -0.05 to 50 hertz notthe amount of data they generate).

The instruments have their own batterypack, GPS and hard drive, and do not needany cables.

In a typical survey, it will take about 50devices, bury them in a hole 50 cm deep,500m to 1km apart, and let them record for24 hours continuously.

The long recording time is necessary toreduce noise when processing the signal, andalso to make sure that artificial sounds can

be filtered out.After 24 hours, the data can be down-

loaded, and the sensor can be moved to an-

other location to do a new survey.The company is currently putting to-

gether fleets of data acquisition equipment.However Spectraseis biggest efforts

have been in developing skills and technolo-gy to interpret and analyse the data.

CompanyThe company currently has 35 employeesand is recruiting a further 15.

In November 2007, the company tookUS $32.5m investment from private equityfirm Warburg Pincus, which it will spend ondeveloping more technology.

StatoilHydro joined as an anchor in-vestor in 2005 (it is now a minority share-holder).

The company grew out of research atZurich University, which published some re-

search in 2003 about seismic waves whichhad been detected coming out of reservoirsknown to contain oil.

The University and Spectraseis put to-gether a research group to investigate further,with 15 Phd level researchers working on it.It claims to have the worlds largest researchgroup focusing on low frequency seismic.

It also works closely with the SwissFederal Institute of Technology, and SwissCommission for Technology and Innovation.Additional research partners include the Uni-versity of Oslo, the University of Berlin, TheJohns Hopkins University in the UnitedStates, and the Australian National Universi-ty.

It also immediately signed up its firstcustomer, Petrobras.

The company has recruited a strongmanagement team.

Ross Newman, chief executive officer,was previously director of capital marketswith Deutsche Morgan Grenfell in NewYork.

Rob Habiger, chief technical officer,

was previously head of seismic technologydevelopment at ConocoPhillips in Houston.

Brice Bouffard, vice president, salesand marketing was previously sales and mar-keting manager of Schlumberger OilfieldServices in continental Europe.

Conducting an LFPS survey in Libya


16/52

IONs Multi-componentSeismic in ChinaUS geophysical company ION has won a big contract from Chinese state-owned oil company Sinopec to conduct seismic exploration using itsmulti-component data acquisition equipment, and to provide associatedseismic data processing and interpretation services.

The contract follows a pilot test of 2D fullwave imaging technology it conducted in2003, in a small area of the SinopecsZhongyuan oil field.

The results showed that areas with sig-nificant shear-wave splitting correlated withareas with productive oil wells in them.

Full wave techniques are used to detect

and map fractures in the rock, because thereflected seismic wave can split when it hitsa natural fracture. This shear-wave splittingcan be characterized and mapped with spe-cialized data processing technology.

Consequently, Sinopec asked ION toconduct a full wave seismic program over a529 km2 area of the Sichuan province in2005.

It was one of the largest onshore fullwave imaging programs ever designed, with10,400 shots and 3,168 live recording sta-

tions, and 100 million traces of data beingacquired.

ION used its digital VectorSeis sensor,connected to its System Four acquisition

platform.VectorSeis is a digital, three-compo-

nent, single-point sensor that measures true3D ground motion and records the full seis-mic wavefield.

SichuanSichuan is a known gas producing region.The area is expected to receive a billion Yuan(nearly $9 billion) in new capital investmentover the next three years.

At Sichuan, the productivity of individ-ual wells can vary significantly, even withinthe same field and geologic horizon.

This variation is often driven by natu-ral fracturing in the reservoir rocks. Morefracturing often means that the well will bemore productive.

Another problem is that one of itslargest subsurface structures, called Xin-Chang, sits under an area with plenty of ob-

structions, both natural and man made.The area is densely populated, and has

highways, railways, pipelines and rivers,cutting across the field.

This means that any seismic acquisitiontechnology needs to be particularly flexible

and reliable.We are convinced of the benefits of

full-wave imaging in this area, said Xu Xi-angrong, President of Southwest Gas Com-

pany at Sinopec.The ION family of companies has the

type of cutting-edge tool-kit, the experienced

personnel, and the collaborative approachthat we require. The raw data looks promis-ing. I look forward to our ongoing coopera-tion on this imaging program and on otheropportunities that may emerge in the future.

ProcessingIn 2006, IONs GX Technology subsidiarywas awarded the contract to process the da-ta.

It is using its full suite of data process-ing and interpretation technologies to createhigh resolution seismic images, and analysethe shear wave splitting.

The seismic data has a broad bandwidth(range of frequencies), which is much betterfor showing up thin structural features, in-cluding thin bedding layers and faults, IONsays.

The shear wave data is proving veryuseful in detecting natural fracture patternsand intensity, and distribution of gas satura-tion, ION says.

ION and Sinopec are now working to-gether to try to identify the next round of

prospective drilling targets in XinChang.ION and Sinopec have also begun dis-

cussions about forming a possible regional partnership, to look for oil and gas in thewhole Sichuan Province and in otherSinopec assets around the world.

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June/July 2008 - digital energyjournal

Many readers will be familiar with the tech-nique of AVO (amplitude versus offset)analysis on seismic data to see how the am-

plitude of the seismic waves change as theseparation between source and receiver in-crease.

This approach requires significantprestack processing to get data in the properformat for interpretation.

SMT has incorporated many of these prestack data conditioning capabilities, inparticular the processes significant to inter-

preters, in its new release of its AVOPAKsoftware.

Amplitude versus Offset is a pre-stackseismic technique often used to reduce risk

by evaluating the effect of hydrocarbons onthe seismic waves.

More specifically, you send and recordsound waves going through the rock, reflect-ed at the same point but with different an-gles (offsets). How the amplitudes changewith angle can indicate the presence of hy-drocarbons, especially gas.

AVO analysis is becoming increasinglycommonplace and SMT wants to make the

process easily accessible to everyday users.The problem is that seismic data has to

be prepared properly before it can be usedfor AVO analysis.

Interpreters have found it was neces-sary to send the data to a processing centerto prepare it for AVO analysis. Seismic Mi-cro-Technology has enhanced its AVOPAKsoftware to include prestack data condition-ing processes tailored for the interpreter.

We are talking about taking a very tech-nical workflow and moving it onto the desk-top so it just becomes a part of the inter-

preters day today workflow,says GaryJones, SMTsAVOPAK prod-uct managerSending

prestack data to processing cen-ters can be veryexpensive andvery time con-

suming, hesays.

The userdoes not needto be a process-ing specialist touse AVOPAK'sdata conditioning. The processes are straightforward, and improve the data quality withminimal side effects. The user can test theresults interactively and feel comfortablewith the results before processing the full

volume.The application is part of SMTs

KINGDOM software, as part of a specialAVO interpretation package calledAVOPAK, which has been available for sev-eral years.

Prestack data conditioningCapabilities include data reorganization,noise reduction, and basic processing capa-

bilities.It is common for interpreters to receive

data in formats unsuitable for interpretationbecause they were interim steps in the pro-cessing flow to get to the final conventionalstacked dataset.

Therefore, this prestack data quite oftenneeds to be sorted and rebinned. AVOPAKsdata reorganization resolves these issues.

Noise in prestack data is always an is-sue because this data has not been stacked,which is the primary method to reduce noisein seismic data. AVOPAKs noise reductioncapabilities include supergathers, edge pre-serving smoothing, spectral balance, and trim

statics. Even these are powerful techniques,SMT has developed interfaces for these

applications that are geared for the inter-preter.

Included in this version of AVOPAK arenumerous processing capabilities: inside and

outside muting, vertical and horizontal gain,bandpass filtering, phase rotation, and gatherflattening.

All of these enhanced capabilities are inaddition to the current AVO interpretation ap-

proaches available in AVOPAK, which in-clude gather horizon picking, AVO attributeextraction, crossplotting, and visualization in2D and 3D.

About SMTSMT (www.seismicmicro.com) wasfounded in 1984. The company currently has2500 customers in 85 countries, with officesin Houston, Croydon (near London), Singa-

pore and Moscow. In July 2007, new in-vestors acquired SMT and a new CEO wasappointed.

The company sells software, not dataprocessing services, although it does providea range of services in connection with thesoftware (training, and helps develop work-flows through their client service).

Based on analysis from the Welling Re-port, SMT is the market leader for geoscien-tific interpretation software running on Mi-crosoft Windows (Landmark and Schlum-

berger are also major companies in geoscien-tific interpretation software but most of theircustomers run the software on UNIX).

The company has 150 employees, ofwhich 80% work in research, and one-thirdof those are geoscientists.

It produces software which can be usedin oil and gas companies by their data inter-

preting staff.

Do it yourself AVO conditioningYou no longer have to send data away to be processed, before doing AVO analysis with it, because withSMTs new software you can do the data processing yourself.

Conditioning AVO data. Left - original data. Middle - after re-bin, filter, andsupergather. Right - flattened to a single velocity. Data courtesy University ofCalgary, CREWES Blackfoot Survey

Conditioning AVO data. Left - original data.Middle - after re-bin and filter. Right - afternoise reduction. Data courtesy University ofCalgary, CREWES Blackfoot Survey


18/52

6



National data repositoriesThere is a growing interest for countries to set up 'National Data Repositories' of shared data betweengovernment, national and private companies, reports Tracey Dancy of Paras Consulting from the recentNational Data Repository Conference in Cape Town, South Africa

The 8th National Data Repository Conferencein Cape Town, South Africa, on February 19-21st, hosted by the Petroleum Agency SA, andwas a very enjoyable and well organised event,and the best attended conference to date.

A national data repository is exactly whatit sounds like a kind of shared data library,which both government, national oil companiesand private companies put data into, which theywant to make available to other organisations.

From a very small meeting in London, theNational Data Repository conference has be-come a forum in which ideas can be shared, andhelp and advice given.

The conference looked at the history ofthe National Data Repository, how they have

been developed in different regions, and atsome of the technology available to help coun-tries develop their own versions of a NationalData Repository.

Growing interestIt is clear that development of a National DataRepository is high on the agenda of many oilministries around the world.

Different countries have different needs,and these can in part be addressed through thedevelopment and implementation of a NationalData Repository.

Co-operation between governments and

the oil industry, working together with stan-dards institutions and so on, can attract invest-ment from the industry to under-explored re-gions.

There are huge amounts of data being pro-duced incrementally more than it is possible

to do anything with, and thisneeds to be stored and madeavailable to investors.

Major industry softwaresuppliers now have NationalData Repository productsavailable, and there is a stepchange towards co-operationamongst oil companies, regu-lators and suppliers.

Stewart Robinson, UKStewart Robinson, head - ITsupport, oil and gas branch,UK government Departmentfor Business, Enterprise andRegulatory Reform (BERR),

began a session on the historyof CDA (Common Data Ac-

cess, a UK nationaldata repository) by encour-aging the countries new to the concept of an

National Data Repository.At a conference such as this where there

are delegates at all stages of National Data

Repository development, including fully func-tional high level implementations, it is often dif-ficult to know where to start, he said.

Mr Robinson emphasised that the bestway to start is with small steps, similar to theway in which the CDA began in the UK.

A meeting in the UK 15 or so years agoconcluded with the consensus that a NationalData Repository in the UK would never hap-

pen, but a decision was made by a small groupof enthusiasts to set up some kind of repositoryanyway. Funding was provided by the industryto hire Paras as consultants to oversee the proj-ect.

A close look at the work in Norway andCanada led to a tender.

From the initial idea in November 1993,the tender led to award of contract in March1995, with the logs phase going live a year lat-er.

Many teething problems were experi-enced, particularly with copies of log data be-ing stored.

A reorganisation in 1998 led to a more ef-fective system by 1999, when Malcolm Flem-

ing was appointed to lead the CDA.Unlike other National Data Repositories,

which tend to act as a national data store, theCDA is effectively a portal to see what data isavailable and where.

Stewarts message was an encouraging

one while it can take a while to set up such

an asset, it helps to start small, and have a foun-dation to build on.

He further noted that setting up an Nation-al Data Repository takes time it can never bedone overnight, although now there are several

proven models that can be used as the basis fornew countries looking at their own.

Regional ChallengesThe conference speakers raised a number of

provocative questions, in particular, why havean National Data Repository?

There are a number of reasons, includingcost reductions, the establishment of a nationalarchive, and the need to attract new participantsto the region.

Whether a National Data Repository de-livers business value is sometimes difficult totell many of the benefits are not quantifiable,and can vary greatly from country to country.Successful licensing rounds can be a measureof National Data Repository performance andimpact.

Clearly some explorers would like to haveeasy access to existing data when looking at

new prospects rather than having to spend largesums of money on acquiring new datasets.

However, they may in turn be reluctant toturn over their own data to a national reposito-ry to benefit other oil companies.

It became clear during the conference that

Cape Town, South Africa - a conference was held on howgovernments and companies can put together better nationaldata repositoriesfor shared data

The best way to start is with small steps -Stewart Robinson, head - IT support, oil andgas branch, UK government Department forBusiness, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform


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We have a proven track record in the planning, deployment andmanagement of information systems up to the scale of multi-terabyte National Data Repositories.

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met. There is co-operation, but it is still in ear-ly stages, and a lack of focus at some of themeetings makes running and hosting them dif-ficult.

However, there is a sense of mutual sup-port, and more countries are attending the con-ference, and beginning to build their own Na-

tional Data Repositories.What has become clear is that the issuesand difficulties are similar in different regions,for example, one major issue is that of securityof data, and entitlements.

A major failing is that of standards, and itis vital that this is addressed. It is not the placeof governments to set standards rather it is vi-tal for people to work together to create thestandards that work.

As an industry we should be working withstandards bodies such as Energistics to buildthe standards required for the industry.

Feedback from the conference demon-strated that it was a great success, in particularthe format and wide range of speakers andcountry case studies.

The social events around the conferencewere very much enjoyed by all the delegates,who very much appreciated the opportunity toexplore and enjoy the beautiful setting of CapeTown.

the way in which a National Data Repository isset up very much depends on a variety of things.

The culture of a country may directly af-fect the ease with which a repository is devel-oped, as may the importance of oil to the in-digenous economy, particularly in developingcountries.

Also, the maturity of the province maymake a difference to the urgency of setting up aNational Data Repository does the region re-ally need external investors?

The case studies presented by the differ-ent regions demonstrated that the setting up ofa National Data Repository has a number ofchallenges, and new projects should look at thelessons learned by existing repository develop-ers.

Specifically, the following were seen asmajor challenges.

Data loading is a major task.

Data quality must be defined.You have to find a way to manage legacy

(older) data and there are costs attached to this.Consensus building is a challenging

processYou have to work out if there a business

case with realisable benefitsYou have to be realistic.

Getting the Ministers supportRobert Winsloe of Digital Earth hosted a break-out session on how to ensure that the concept

of a National Data Repository is embraced bythe regions Energy Minister.

In the discussion, delegates said that theirmain priorities include maintaining a secure andsustainable supply of oil, as well as territorialand data integrity.

Other issues, very much region depend-ent, included environmental issues, political se-

curity, the political af-filiation ofthe ministerand so on.

Onearea that

may nothave ap- peared ini-tially impor-tant is that ofsocial devel-opment and community impact.

National Data Repositories promote in-ward investment, and for an external oil com-

pany it would be relevant to look at other localissues, for example water, ground water andland use, as well as urgent local social issues,such as infrastructure and support of local com-

munities through employment, education andso on.

This would go beyond the energy depart-ment, involving other ministries and influencefrom other ministers, although it may well as-sist in securing industry funding.

For example, is there a way to get an oilcompany to fund a National Data Repositoryso that their entry into a country can have a ben-eficial effect on the locals? As with all similar

projects, it may be necessary to start at projectbased level and then grow to encompass more.

National Data Repositories can influenceOPEC quotas, as they demonstrate data trans-

parency and therefore proven reserves, dele-gates said.

ConclusionsThe early ideals set by the National DataRepository meetings have only partially been

Leading the discussion aboutgetting your energy ministerinvolved - Robert Winsloe,

president, Digital Earth

Tracey Dancy is a Marketing Executivewith Paras, an international consultancy,

highly regarded for its ability to defineand resolve difficult challenges. Uniquelyindependent, Paras assists clients inselecting best in class solutions, anddeveloping strategies for technologyenabled change, delivering measurable,lasting business value.

Why should collaboration be held backby people?

The oil and gas industry frequently complains that its efforts to introduce collaborative working tools arebeing held back by people. Is something going wrong here? By Dimitris Lyras

This years Intelligent Energy conference(February 25-27, Amsterdam) started outwith impressive technology implementations

by oil companies.

The main panel of speakers from Sta-toil, Saudi Aramco, BT, Shell and Schlum-

berger each illustrated huge progress in in-telligent field technology since the last con-ference in Amsterdam in 2006.

British Telecom CEO Ben Verwaayen

emphasized his full collaboration with ma-jor oil companies to bring their operationsinto a small number of integrated virtualspaces each spanning huge distances.

Bringing expertise from around theglobe to each problem no matter where it is

became the prominent theme on the first day.This was despite stiff competition for

delegates attention from new technologiessuch as using nano technology for well mon-

itoring presentedamong other mul-ti billion develop-ments by Saudi

Aramco.But no mat-

ter how elaborateand ambitious thehardware andsoftware develop- Dimitris Lyras


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SPE ANNUAL TECHNICAL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION

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Society of Petroleum Engineers

Connect and exchange knowledge with your peers

at the E&P industrys premier technical conference.

ATCE 2008 offers

Peer-selected technical program covering current

applications and future technologies

400+ exhibiting companies showcasing the latest

products and services Student and young professional activities

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Dimitris Lyras is a consultant writer toDigital Energy Journal. He is director ofLyras Shipping, a tanker and dry bulkshipping company; a member of theexecutive committee of Intertanko, theindependent tanker owners association;founder of Ulysses Learning, which

produces software to train staff who workin call centres; and founder of Ulysses

Systems, which produces software tohelp staff in the shipping and offshoreindustry manage vessel operations related

processes.

ments, all the speakers emphasized the ques-tion on the human factor, the changes in

processes, the need for even more compe-tence cultures, the struggle to managechange, the human element.

Mr Verwaayen of BT more than anyoneemphasized the need to engage people in the

management of change.Having experienced disruptive changein the telecoms industry he warned that suchdisruptive elements will sooner or later hitthe oil industry.

In an example he described an internalseminar at BT promoting innovation.

In this seminar he told of a question he put to his audience; to think of the mostprevalent obstacle to innovation. One obvi-ously confident young attendee stood up andsaid told him that it was he who was thegreatest obstacle to innovation.

All innovative ideas must be approvedby you, he said. How can you expect tounderstand a person my age?

So we could safely add generation gapor perhaps differing embedded mentalities tothe obstacles to change.

What is changing, actually?I would like to ask the question, how muchis really changing?

In the history of time are we really ex-periencing disruptive change today?

Are we really being asked to changeour skills, our values, our way of life somuch these days simply by adopting moderntechnology?

Does prospect of meeting people in vir-tual space, the opportunity to slice a prob-lem into increments of specialisation anddistribute them to experts, the need to getused to new hardware and software reallychange our working lives so much?

How can any of this compare to the dis-ruption caused by the last two world wars orthe disruption experienced by our distant an-cestors as they struggled to understand the

physical world around them?Disruptive change is certainly nothing

new. In fact change is probably less disrup-tive than it ever was historically.

So why is there such prominent pain as-sociated with people adapting to change?

Adaptation to change is really nothingnew except that in the past organizations and

people who were not a part of the change,often died. Today only the enterprise diesand fortunately the people in the enterprise

rarely take change so badly.Mr. Lund of Statoil emphasized the

need for more leadership in opening up com-munication barriers and the need for evengreater competence in oil company staff. No

doubt Statoil has recent achievements thatjustify his suggestion.

And of course competence is the an-swer.

It is the easiest and the most difficultsolution all at the same time.

Better people solve the people problem

and certainly the oil industry has recently en-joyed enough profits to attract the best peo-ple.

But what happens later? Disruptivechange can certainly change profitability.

Why is there a people problem?Have we ever really tried to solve the people

problem? Why do people not understand thereason for change? Can we not break thisdown to its constituents?

Is it not plausible that resistance tochange comes from insufficient explanation?

From internal politics; or more precise-ly poor goal structures in the enterprise?From solutions that need more tailoring tothe circumstances?

If modern software is the primary causefor change, then could it not be the tool bywhich change is made easier?

ChinaWhen a questioner asked the CEO panel atthe Intelligent Energy conference to statewhat they perceived as the greatest agent of

change, each panelist had a list of two orthree items.

Not so with Mr. Gould of Schlumberg-er; his response was a laconic China!

Few will argue that the human elementin the oil industry has any misgivings aboutChina. Rather the opposite. China is the giftthat keeps on giving to the oil industry andno doubt the one single greatest contributorto change.

SoftwareSo back to software and hardware as the cul-

prits for change of the disruptive kind.Thirty years ago there was a lot of work

done in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to getcomputers to read a newspaper.

Those who were involved foundtremendous obstacles in getting computersto do what we humans find elementary andsomewhat relaxing on our morning com-mute.

Why so? Why has such a prosaic activ-ity perplexed computers irrevocably, when aset of servers and a protocols, in short the

world wide web, has driven half of us tochange our lives?

Most of those AI gurus would tell usquite simply that computers are not the partwe fail to understand.

On the contrary, it is our own behaviorpatterns that we have trouble understandingand abstracting into rules.

Why is this? Why after at least 5000years of contemplation of our own behavior

by famous philosophers can we not applyrules to how we understand things, how we

communicate, how we solve problems, howwe explain things, how we remember things.The short answer from your AI guru is

that corporations did not want to invest inthis work. They had people and people didnot want to be replaced by machines.

Our ancestors such as Socrates andmany others did actually shed a lot of lighton how we think and learn but the differenceis that they had far less need for a scalableway to get peoples minds to all work togeth-er. Remember in those days most of the cor-

porate staff were pulling oars or swinging ice

picks.

CollaborationIt is precisely the need for collaborationacross the globe in problems solving

processes, in development of ideas and in in-novation that makes the discipline of under-standing how we think and learn so muchmore essential.

Above all it is the idea of co-ordinatinga huge organisation of dispersed brains thatmakes the breakdown of how problems are

solved in the enterprise the item of our age.The human factor is not the obstacle, it

is the key undiscovered resource, that is un-til 30 years ago. Now it is simply the one re-source getting the least return on investment.

Perhaps the changes that technologyhas brought in recent years will not longer

be unpredictable even for those entrenchedin the previous technological paradigmwhen, the understanding of how people real-ly think and work is more widespread.

On a more practical level it is the onlyway to scale expertise in the enterprise.


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Freely Available

The Energistics collaborative technologies, WITSML and PRODML, are universally

applicable, plug-and-play and proven. Adoption o these open standards will assist your

organization or customers with:

Production Optimization

Operational EfciencySaety and Regulatory Compliance

Reserves Replacement

And they are free.

To download Energistics standards or or more details about participating with the upstream industry in

the collaborative development and deployment eforts, please visit www.energistics.org.

2007, Energistics. All rights reserved.

FREEo use

restrictions

FREEo proprietary

code or

anti-competitive

constraints

FREEo political or

geographical

constraints

FREEo prohibitive

pricing model

constraints


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Calculating the properties of rockNew rock physics company Ingrain has developed a new method to calculate rock porosity andpermeability, by taking a high resolution scan of a small rock s

Documents

#13 Digital Energy Journal - June 2008