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Standards Leadership Council

Thursday, July 4, 2013

The Standards Leadership Council group of Oil and Gas Data Standards Association had a meeting in London on Feb 13, discussing (among other topics) professionalising data management, metadata standards, well plot symbology and a standard way to calibrate raster well log files

The SLC was formed in early 2012 by the big data standards organisations in the upstream oil and gasindustry, including Professional Petroleum Data Management Association (PPDM), Energistics, PIDX, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), MIMOSA, OPC Foundation and the Pipeline Open Data Standard Association (PODS)

The main aim of SLC was to identify areas of intersection of their work, to avoid creating duplicate or conflicting standards, and to identify opportunities where they could work together.

Another core aim was to work out how to better deliver the value proposition message for standards implementation, and ensure maximum member benefits through participation in standards organizations.

Malcolm Fleming, Chief Executive of Common Data Access (CDA), an organisation which develops shared data solutions for the UK offshore oil industry, proposed seven principles that are needed in the E&P data management: a single, common system; an independent, credible and competent authority; appropriate governance by key stakeholders; a not-for-profit model; industry recognition and endorsement; sustainability.

Further cooperation is needed, he said, if fragmented, competing and inconsistent solutions are to be avoided. The co-operation needs to cover oil companies and service providers, in all geographical regions.

Metadata Standards

Scott Hills of Chevron, together with Jerry Hubbard of Energistics, talked about the need for defining a standard for metadata - or to put it another way, a standard way of describing data.

The business driver is to try to reduce the amount of time staff spend finding, retrieving and verifying information (currently estimated to be 40 per cent of their time), and manage the growing data volumes (estimated to be growing 60-80 per cent a year).

Well plot symbology

There was a presentation about the lack of standardisation in well plot symbology (symbol and terminology sets) and the 'technical language' that is shared between related individuals and companies.

There are so many different lists of symbology. Sometimes the same term has different meanings, or different terms have the same meaning.

There could be a standard list of definitions, clearly defined and consistent, and open to public review and comment.

Standard raster calibration file format

There was a discussion about the need for standard formats for calibrating depth on raster well log files.

In order to exchange raster well log files between systems, you have to know exactly how distance on the file calibrates against distance in the well the data was recorded in.

A standard calibration file could be developed for each type of depth related file, which could be stored as part of a standard.

There could be a standard format for this calibration file.

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