National Data Repository conference in Delhi
Feature Articles, May  29  2009 (Digital Energy Journal)

- As plans come together for NDR9, the ninth oil and gas National Data Repository conference in Delhi on Aug 31 – Sept 3, we spoke to Martin Peersmann, chairman of the NDR Work Group about what delegates can expect, business opportunities around NDR and what the NDR organisation does

NDR9, the ninth meeting of the National Data Repository (NDR) work group will take place in Delhi, India, on August 31st to September 3rd, with discussions about how to set up and run national data repositories, procure software and services. It will discuss benefits for emerging nations, ways to help governments and industry work together, and developments with standards. Further information is online at www.ndr9.com.

Martin Peersmann, chairman of the Energistics NDR Work Group

The meeting should be useful to people from regulatory agencies, government ministries, energy companies, oilfield service companies, software vendors and anyone interested in the exchange of oil and natural gas quality information with governments in a structured manner, says Martin Peersmann, chairman of the Energistics NDR Work Group and director of the National Joint Venture Topographic Base-map of the Netherlands (LSV GBKN).

One of the reasons Delhi was chosen for the 2009 meeting because it fits into the agenda of the organisations to act as a global organization formed to assist government and regulatory agencies in the collection, storage and dissemination of quality oil and natural gas related data After South-America (Cartagena 2006), Africa (Cape Town 2008), the Indian Directorate General of Hydrocarbons(DGH) by their “kind invitation, enthusiasm and great support” provided the opportunity to organize a NDR in South Asia, Mr Peersmann says.

Delhi - location of the National Data Repositories conference

“Particpating in NDR is all about working together, both government and industry, on a common set of requirements in support of shared goals such as developing regulatory IT administrative systems, linking NDR processes with administrative processes and releasing high quality data to the upstream energy industry in a global context,” he says.

“NDR meetings are open to all government and regulatory agencies as well as other industry organizations and focus on sharing lessons, learned, data management techniques and exploring software available to manage data repositories in the value chain and true the different phases of the E&P life cycle from exploration, appraisal, production, enhanced production up to abandonment.

“We are convinced that at NDR9 in Delhi government and regulatory agencies in this region can benefit form the experience obtained by agencies in the mature E&P regions in Europe and North America.

The event will be held at the Vigyan Bhavan, described as one of the top conference centres in India.

Many of the countries attending the conference have oil and gas industries which are still in a fairly junior phase – they have started producing oil, but not yet worked out how to manage the production for the best interests of the country. The conference allows a sharing of technology and expertise between countries which have already set up successful national data repositories with countries which are just setting them up. “We have an enormous learning curve about what you should do and what not,” he says.

“As an organisation, we exchange knowledge of data management and standards,” he says.

“E&P business is a global business, so we need global standards and need this kind of forums. We also want to share our experience on how you set up data management around the world with new emerging E&P operators, both government and industry .

“Government has a critical role in the management of data associated with the regulation of oilfield activities and a legal responsibility to provide quality data to the industry in a very structered manner. Without open standards being used by the regulatory agencies in a global fashion, industry is required to meet many data types requests form many different countries and ultimately the data quality suffers.

“Regulatory bodies must be proactive in the implementation and uptake of standards in collaboration with the industry. The NDR Work Group and NDR meetings facilitate this process and is on the fore front and unique in its kind and on how both government and industry work together on the standarisation of data and information exchange compared with other industry sectors ,e.g. water management, environment or civil engineering..

A national data repository is a database of all the oil and gas activity going on in a certain country – to make sure oil companies do not have to duplicate work done by someone else, and the government can keep track of what is going on, among other purposes.

“It serves three different groups: the government, which is ensuring that the country gets the maximum from the resource over the long term and that it is well managed, and can attract investment; oil and gas companies, which want to know which fields to invest in, and generate the data; and service companies, which normally collect the data and manage the repository.

The primary operator of the repository can be the government (eg the US Geological Survey); a business providing a service to government (eg DISKOS in Norway, operated by Halliburton on behalf of the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate); or a new company established by business with the support and involvement of government (Common Data Access in the UK). The role, to put it short, is ensuring that the data is complete, consistent, of high quality, robust and available.

From a national point of view, it is very important for a country to manage its data, to ensure that the resources provides the maximum benefit to the country over the longer term.

The data repository can also act as a showcase for a country aiming to attract oil and gas investment – demonstrating what they already know and that the data is readily available so companies do not have to collect it all again. The data is also very useful for a country to examine its current and future tax income.

There are plenty of benefits to oil companies as well. They can use the data to ensure that they aren’t doing seismic surveys over an area which has already been surveyed to a similar standard. Oil companies can ensure they can access the best possible data in the best format, so they don’t spend their time reformatting it.

Before his current position, Mr Peersmann worked at Shell for 10 years. “We always worked in joint ventures, and sometimes 40-50 per cent of time we wasted in a project with data conversion – making sure we had the right data,” he says. “People said – we want to spend our time doing our core business data analysis and modelling, finding and producing oil and gas – not data conversion”. This is one of the initial drivers for setting up data exchange standard within the E&P industry the last decade..

Business opportunities from NDR

There are plenty of potential business opportunities from helping to set up and operate an NDR, including providing consultancy, software, hardware. The opportunities and required support by government and industry differ over the E&P life cycle in the value chain and depend on the scale of E&P activities and geographical situation. This at present day has created an attractive portofolio in the E&P data management business ranging from many small to a few big opportunities

Countries and regions currently looking at setting up or improving their data repositories include Central Asia, Kazakhstan, South East Asia, India, China, South America, and Africa, Mr Peersmann says.

The biggest contract is for operating the service itself and providing software to operate the service. Unsurprisingly, these tend to go to large service providers (for example Schlumberger and Halliburton have won contracts to operate the Norwegian data repository).

There are plenty of business opportunities for smaller companies though. For example, Kadme and Digital Earth won contracts to help the Columbians with their data.

Countries setting up data repositories might want to engage consultants to give them advice on the data storage and management infrastructure, converting data from large analogue archives (tape or plotted logs), quality control the data and manage data communications.

There is also scope for consultancy services around new data formats (such as 4D seismic) – or advising how the system could be organised and how the legal infrastructure could work. Many countries do not have large government budgets, so all of this needs to be achieved at low or zero cost to the government.

Data repositories also need a large amount of hardware and software.

The holy grail, which not even the Dutch or Norwegians have achieved, would be for production data to be sent directly and automatically from the field to the authorities, in a standard language such as Energistics’ Production Mark-up Language (PRODML).

Mr Peersmann believes that it is important to encourage more people to get involved in data management – a field which is tremendously important, but not usually seen as an attractive career option. “The trade of E&P data management – is a very challenging, involving not only technological challenges but in which processes and people and knowledge networks also play a major role. It provides enormous added value to government, industry and society, hence is therefore very rewarding and a trade to be proud off. ” he says.

History

The UK, Netherlands and Norway are normally credited with leading the oil and gas national data repository movement. The UK established its Common Data Access national data repository in 1995; Norway established its DISKOS national data repository in 1994 – with Stewart Robinson (UK) and Eric Toogood (Norway) normally being credited as taking leading roles, Mr Peersmann says.

Meanwhile the first National Data Repository conference was held in London in April 1996, to try to develop common standards between the UK, Norway and the Netherlands, so oil companies could access data out of all of them in the same format (for example if they had a field which crossed national boundaries).

The meeting was followed quickly by a meeting in Stavanger in September 1996, and Calgary in June 1997. Then there was a break until a March 2002 meeting in Stavanger. Then the meetings increased pace and scale, being held in Washington DC in September 2004, Utrecht (Netherlands) in September 2005, Cartagena, Columbia in September 2006, February 2008 in Cape Town, and now August 31 – Sept 3 2009 in New Delhi.

Countries closely involved at present include UK, Netherlands, Norway, Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States.

Energistics (previously known as POSC) was involved with NDR right from the beginning. The NDR organisation was formally established as a work group of the eRegulatory Special Interest Group within Energistics in February 2009.

Netherlands

The Netherlands national resources data repository has a particularly interesting history, Mr Peersmann says. It was first established in 1810, during Napoleon times, when the country wanted to manage data about salt mines, with salt used for dynamite production and preserving herring. This was 10 years before it started a national data repository for landowners

Its oil and gas data repository was established in 1960 when its giant Groningen gas field was discovered. The Netherlands decided it would preserve Groningen as long as possible as national treasure – and stimulate companies to produce smaller fields, only producing Groningen at times of high demand (for example during winter). Revenues from the Groningen gas field were used as a basis for the country’s social security system and coastal flood water defence infrastructure known as the Delta works.

With much of the country on reclaimed land, good information management has always been very important to the Netherlands – in particular, about who was pumping water where.

The country now has 10 different registries, including for housing, roads, cable networks and coastal defence systems, with all data completely public. These were built along similar lines to the exploration and production data repository. “The success of the work in the E&P industry has been exported to other sectors,” Mr Peersmann says.

For photos of the 2008 event in Capetown see www.ndr8.com

National Data Repositories conference

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