dej apr-may.

qxp 26/03/2007 20:53 Page 1

April 2007 Issue 6

FOCUS ON D ATA M A N AG E M E N T
B P - better data leads to better maintenance
Statoil - data management is not creative
E x xo n M o b i l - data management is a skill
S h e l l - know your data quality
B H P B i l l i t o n - search for data using Google Earth
B a k e r H u g h e s - manage your drilling knowledge
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45 Page 2

It’s a wonderful
feeling.
The moment it all comes together.

When the right hand knows what

the left hand is doing and you can
access information across your
entire organisation.

BT can help make that happen

with one converged network
spanning over 170 countries. This
allows you to prioritise and share
that information, wherever you are.

Feels good doesn’t it?

In the digital networked economy, BT’s

world-leading innovation enables expert
geoscientists and petroleum engineers
to stay in the office while they oversee
multiple operations in the field. This lowers
exposure to risk and increases their value
to the business.

To find out more visit bt.com/networked

Networks • IT • Services
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45 Page 1
April 2007 Issue 6
Digital Energy Journal
213 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9FJ, UK
www.digitalenergyjournal.com
Tel +44 (0)207 510 4935
Fax +44 (0)207 510 2344
Editor
Karl Jeffery
karl@digitalenergyjournal.com
Technical editor/ IT manager
Keith Forward
keith@digitalenergyjournal.com
Consultant writer
Tracey Dancy, Paras Consulting
Production, design and circulation
Katerina Jeffery
katya@digitalenergyjournal.com
Advertising sales
David Jeffries
Only Media Ltd
Tel +44 (0)208 674 9444
djeffries@onlymedia.co.uk
Digital Energy Journal is published
on print 6 times a year, supported
by a free website and email news service
We cover information technology
and communications in upstream
oil and gas production,
drilling / completions and exploration.
Each issue of Digital Energy Journal is mailed
to 2000 oil and gas executives, as well as
distributed at major trade shows such as
ATCE, Petex, Digital Energy
and Intelligent Energy.
Subscriptions: GBP 195 a year for 6 issues.
To subscribe, please contact circulation
manager Katerina Jeffery on
katya@digitalenergyjournal.com,
Digital Energy Journal, 213 Marsh Wall,
London, E14 9FJ.
Alternatively you can subscribe online at
www.digitalenergyjournal.com
Front cover:
The latest developments in modeling
and simulation enable collaborative
decisions for a heavy oil project.
Courtesy of Schlumberger.
Printed in the UK by
THE MAGAZINE PRINTING COMPANY
www.magprint.co.uk
Contents
Exporation Software
Statoil and Landmark metered software
OpeniT, the company which makes a system to measure how much software is
used by the user hour, reports that the system works very well for Statoil and
4
Landmark.
Neftex models entire Middle East / North 5
Africa
Neftex Petroleum Consultants of Abingdon, UK,
has completed a project to build a 3D strati-
graphic (rock layer) model of the entire Middle
East / North Africa region.
Questa and Roxar's Tempest simulator
Digital Energy Journal spoke to John Campanella, senior
6
reservoir engineer with Colorado mining and energy
consultancy Norwest Questa Engineering Corp, about its use of
Roxar's reservoir simulator software
Managing your data - SMI
Digital Energy Journal went to SMI’s information and data management
8
conference in London on Jan 31- Feb 1 2007, for some in-depth discussion
about how to make data management work
Control and Equipment
Feasibility of well temperature sensing
Shell did a project with LIOS Technology to assess the feasibility
and economical added value of permanent downhole temperature
10
sensing in both onshore and offshore projects in Brunei.
Making the digital oilfield work
Mike Campbell and Dutch Holland of US energy consultants Holland and
Davis give their tips on how to manage a digital oilfield project - tip - maybe
12
treat it like any other asset project?
Resman
Using chemicals to detect location of water ingress 13
Honeywell’s Digital Oilfield Platform
Jon Helsingeng, marketing manager for oil and gas Europe,
Middle East and Africa, Honeywell, tells the story of Honeywell’s
new system to use automation data
14
Production Software
Baker Hughes drilling information system cuts costs
Baker Hughes has implemented an information management system for its
drilling operations, which enables lessons learned to be recorded and
17
retrieved by other engineers around the the company.
Bolo Systems 115 per cent annual growth
Colorado oil and gas accounting software company Bolo Systems reports that
it has grown 115 per cent in the past twelve months, comparing its 2006 rev-
18
enues with 2005. This means it has more than doubled its revenues.
How service orientated architecture works
Tracey Dancy of Paras Consulting explains how oil and gas
companies can use service orientated architecture to get the
latest data in the right format whenever they want
18
Digital Energy conference preview
Our preview of the Digital Energy Conference and exhibition in
Houston in April 11-12 21
Evolutions in data management – IQPC report
Digital Energy Journal went to IQPC’s oil and gas knowledge management
conference in London, Feb 27-28, to find out the latest industry developments
and thinking in the best way to do it
22
April 2007- digital energy journal 1
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45 Page 2
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45
Portable 12tb data system
www.fieldpac.com
UK data storage company European
Storage Concept Ltd has launched a
new portable data storage system
that can carry up to 12 terabytes,
called FieldPac.
The system was specifically
developed for the seismic
industry, enabling crews to col-
lect and store large amounts of
data in the field, and quickly
move it to a processing centre.
A 'major player' in seismic
data processing has already
purchased the system, the com-
pany says.
The whole disk drive pack
can be removed on its chassis
and transported to another
data centre for processing.
$4m invested in
OpenSpirit -
Paradigm joins
www.openspirit.com
Paradigm has joined Schlumberger,
Shell Technology Ventures and
Chevron, along with existing
OpenSpirit members, together
investing $4m in OpenSpirit.
This is the first time Paradigm
has invested in OpenSpirit.
Chevron's investment was
made by its venture capital arm
CTTV Investments LLC.
OpenSpirit makes tools to
link together geoscientific data-
bases and files, made in different
software packages.
The announcement follows a
Memorandum of Understanding
made by Paradigm to invest in
OpenSpirit, agreed in April 2006.
The specific amounts each
company invested was not dis-
closed.
John W Gibson, executive
Chevron installs inSORS collaboration system
www.insors.com
inSORS Integrated Communications,
a Chicago-based software develop-
er, has installed a network connect-
ing field engineers, geophysicists
and other knowledge workers in
the Houston office to deepwater
drill ships in Chevron's Tahiti and
Blind Faith fields.
The inSORS Grid IG2 enables
personnel on each drill ship to
connect with real time collabo-
ration rooms in Houston to
quickly discuss and resolve
issues and make timely deci-
sions thereby helping to reduce
costly delays.
Page 3
The system is designed for
robust use, with a lifetime of
over 5,000 insertion and
removal cycles, compared to
100-200 cycles for normal disk
drives with SCSI and SATA con-
nectors, the company says.
The company claims that
transporting data on a physical
drive can be more secure than
moving it on a network.
The storage unit can fit in a
standard 19 inch rack, taking
up three units of height.
The system can replace tape
or multiple disk drive modules
which most companies current-
ly use. The company says that
there can be problems with
tape, including damage during
chairman and CEO of Paradigm,
has also joined the OpenSpirit
board, in connection with the
investment.
OpenSpirit has also expand-
ed its board of directors to make
room for a seat for an independ-
ent board member to be
announced shortly.
Following the investment,
OpenSpirit plans to increase its
technical and sales presence in
different regions around the
world, as well as hire more
research and development staff.
Dan Piette, president and
CEO of OpenSpirit, says that the
investment represents a 'signifi-
cant step' in the growth of
OpenSpirit.
Mr Piette is particularly
pleased with Paradigm's invest-
ment, which he says confirms
OpenSpirit's Vision that it should
be possible to create a system
for integrating different data
and applications, completely
platform independent, and
based on open standards.
The IG2 client software runs on
any Windows or Macintosh
based device and uses a network bandwidth satellite connection.
of servers
that active-
ly optimise
IP connec-
tions to
ensure reli-
able com-
munica-
tions. The
system
allows for
high-quali- Chevron vis laboratory
ty video,
Exploration software
FieldPac - a portable 12tb data
storage system, designed for seismic
operations. Shown here is the disk
drive pack and the base station
transit and head alignment dif-
ficulties between recording and
reading drives. There are also
problems with multiple disk
drives, such as a low number of
drives which can be used at
once and people mixing the
drives up. FieldPac gets around
these problems.
Dan Piette, CEO
of OpenSpirit
OpenSpirit's
goal is to help
geoscientists
and techni-
cians around
the world to
work together, without being
tied down to using products by
any one vendor, because the
software helps them use differ-
ent software products together.
OpenSpirit aims for a work-
ing scenario when there are no
file formats which tie users
down to specific software pack-
ages.
"OpenSpirit has a proven
record of allowing end users to
build workflows that combine
proprietary and third-party
technologies," says Herbert
Yuan, IT and information man-
agement manager for Shell
International Exploration and
Production, and an OpenSpirit
board member.
full-duplex audio, and real time
data collaboration over a low-
April 2007 - digital energy journal
RET $29m
contract to
Input Output
www.i-o.com
Norway marine seismic contractor
Reservoir Exploration Technology
has awarded a $29m contract to
seismic systems specialist Input
Output, to buy its VectorSeis Ocean
system, which collects seismic data
from the bottom of the ocean.
The system is redeployable
(it can be moved somewhere
else after it has been installed)
and gathers full wave (multi-
component) data.
The system has enhanced
diagnostic capabilities, which
come with its Gator command
and control software, made by
Input Output's subsidiary
Concept Systems.
Delivery of the system is
scheduled for the fourth quar-
ter of 2007.
"Seabed acquisition is prov-
ing to be a valuable and cost-
effective solution for explo-
ration and reservoir appraisal
in areas having complex geol-
ogy or high development
costs," says Chuck Ledet, sen-
ior vice president of the
Marine Imaging Systems
Division at Input Output.
Ikon Science opens
training
centre
Andrea Leech,
support and
training manager
at Ikon Science's
new training centre
in London
www.iconscience.com
The Ikon Science Training Centre is
based at the company's recently
renovated offices in London and
has space for up to 12 students in a
high-tech computing environment
or up to 20 for bespoke lecture-
based programmes.
The centre was opened in
response to increased demand
for its RokDoc software pack-
ages and will offer a selection
of software and discipline-
based training courses, begin-
ning with two-day foundation
courses on RokDoc and
RokDoc-3D4D, with other
course options to follow,
including geopressure and
anisotropy studies.
The company has also
announced the growth of its
global team with the addition
of a regional sales manager for
Africa and the expansion of its
UK-based consulting geologist
team.
3
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45 Page 4
Exploration software news
Statoil and Landmark
metered software - successful
OpeniT, the company which makes a system to measure how much
software is used by the user hour, reports that the system works
very well for Statoil and Landmark.
tatoil has been using the metered
S service since 2004, and since then has
had a "trusting and successful" rela-
tionship with Landmark as a result of using
the metering, OpeniT says.
Paying for software by the hour is an
alternative system to paying for it by com-
pany-wide license, or by the seat, or by the
seat year.
Calculating software price by the hour is
a controversial issue.
Some industry commentators believe
that it makes more sense for a company to
purchase software for a single negotiated
price so that the whole company can use it
indefinitely, and it is the purchaser's
responsibility whether or not it is actually
used.
However OpeniT believes that buying
software by the hour can facilitate a more
trusting relationship between both parties.
The buyer knows how much value the
company is getting from the software (or
not), and the vendor has information about
how the product is being used.
Of course neither vendor nor user ulti-
mately benefits if the software is purchased
but not actually used, and most of us are
aware of situations when this has hap-
pened.
Statoil and Landmark
Under the terms of the agreement, Statoil
pays Landmark for the use of its
OpenWorks geological data management
software by the user hour, with an agreed
minimum fee.
At Statoil, a wide area network licence
server runs licenses around the world.
Usage fees are determined from a negotiat-
ed formula including list price, volume /
commitment by customer, and metered
concurrent users.
Landmark customers can use the infor-
mation to make better decisions about the
technology and its value to their business.
They can see who is using the tools, and
who might need more training.
Meanwhile Landmark gets a detailed
view of customer usage for its sales and
budget planning. Landmark can evaluate
how well the workflow is working.
Landmark also learns from the customer's
use of the system, and which features are
being used. It can 'sunset' old tools.
Now Landmark has incorporated Open
iT LicenseAnalyzer in its portfolio of tools,
to support pay per use license agree-
ments, so the price can be incorporated in
a bid.
Open iT reports that the conversion
from standard to usage based licensing
went smoothly because of the guaranteed
annual minimum commitment fee.
According to OpenIT, one of the rea-
sons Statoil originally chose the Landmark
software was because it was open to the
idea of a usage-based contract.
OpenIT says that its CIOs are increas-
ingly aware of the idea of 'value based'
purchasing of IT assets, and ask their
teams to measure and analyse their tech-
nology usage.
"No longer is it easy to sell large pack-
ages of software with a one-price model,"
the company says.
OpeniT has offices in US, Norway and
Germany. It has many worldwide oil and
gas companies as clients including
Marathon Oil, ConocoPhillips, Anadarko,
BHP Billiton, Statoil, Pemex, Nexen,
Newfield, Gazprom and Hydro.
www.openit.com
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45
Neftex models entire Middle East /
North Africa
Neftex Petroleum Consultants of Abingdon, UK, has completed a project to build a 3D stratigraphic
(rock layer) model of the entire Middle East / North Africa region.
A view SE of Neftex's MENA Cube, North Africa in the foreground, Arabian Peninsula
beyond. Grid size ca 8,000km by 3,000km, with 1,000m increments
A Detailed View of Neftex's North Africa Cube (view NW to Hassi Messaoud, national
boundary in red
he online database is called Neftex
T MENA (for Middle East / North
Africa). Users can subscribe to one
or both (Middle East / North Africa) areas
of the model.
It covers an area of 8,000 x 3,000km,
using data from 600 field depth maps and
1,500 wells, over 150 regional cross sec-
tions, over 600 field depth contours, and
200 facies (rock) maps. It was built from
publicly available data.
Customers can use the system to see
source rocks, seals and traps.
The model is drawn at a 1km grid scale,
so the model is big enough to enable
exploration and production to be tied
together, but not so big that the time to
manage the models was excessive.
The system needs 4-16 GB of ram, 370
GB of hard drive space and a high specifi-
cation graphics card.
Many geoscientists and reservoir engi-
neers already have computers with a speci-
Page 5
fication above this, so they can all work
together on the project.
The model is so large that it needs to take
into consideration the fact that the earth is
not flat, creating new challenges.
The model was first released in February
2006, and has been updated every month
since then as new well data has been
released.
For many years, 3D models had only been
built for single reservoir or a few neighbour-
ing reservoirs, whilst maps (2D) had been
available for large areas. Neftex believes it is
breaking new ground with 3D models cover-
ing an area this large.
Neftex is now aiming to incorporate more
information into the cube, such as depth sur-
faces tied to wells, isopach maps (connect-
ing points of equal thickness), depth / tem-
perature maps and other modelling (eg car-
bonate platforms).
Another 500 wells will be incorporated
into the model over the next few months.
Exploration software
The cube was built by loading wells, sur-
faces, maps and cross sections into the soft-
ware; re-gridding the depth maps and tying
them to the cross sections, fields and wells;
creating isopach (lines of common rock
thickness) maps, which display the strati-
graphic thickness of the rocks; and then
checking for consistency.
About Neftex
Neftex Petroleum Consultants, founded in
2001, specialises in making stratigraphic
models for oil companies. Customers
include BP, Chevron, Petrobras, Petronas,
Devon, Shell and Statoil.
The company's specialism is being able
to interpret geoscience data sets (eg with
data about an outcrop, subsurface, drilling
and engineering), and turn it into an inte-
grated subsurface model.
The company provides online access to
its rock models covering the Middle East,
North Africa, the Black Sea, the Greater
Caspian and West Eurasia.
The models can connect together data
from exploration and field development
work, and operators can link their own data
with Neftex data if they want.
Roxar
The model was built using Roxar's IRAP
RMS software.
For a model of this size to be built, it
needed the 64 bit computing capability of
IRAP and its scaleability, Neftex says.
But 64 bit computing and higher per-
formance workstations has begun to make
it possible.
Neftex chose Roxar's software because it
wanted a package that could quickly han-
dle large amounts of data, without compro-
mising any of it.
Roxar's IRAP RMS software has 14 soft-
ware modules, including mapping, model-
ling, planning and workflow management,
which can be used together to make the
module.
One important tool on IRAP used to
build the model was RMSwellstrat, which
can be used to group wells together, create
well fence diagrams, view well paths and
log data in 3D, alongside other reservoir
data such as seismic, fault information and
existing maps.
Subscribers to RMSwellstrat will be able
to use this feature when they are working
with the Neftex MENA cube.
Another software module Neftex made
good use of is RMSfaultseal, a fault seal
analysis program, which can analyse fault
zone properties in a model, leading to a
greater understanding of faults.
April 2007 - digital energy journal 5
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45 Page 6
Exploration software
Questa and Roxar's Tempest simulator
Digital Energy Journal spoke to John
Campanella, senior reservoir engineer with
Colorado mining and energy consultancy
Norwest Questa Engineering Corp, about its
use of Roxar's reservoir simulator software
orwest Questa Engineering recently
N used Roxar's Tempest simulator for
a field in the Williston Basin, US mid
continent, for a US independent oil compa-
ny client, who wanted to evaluate
enhanced recovery options (air injection).
Questa used Tempest to build a reliable
full field model, so it could optimise high
pressure air injection and optimise the
sequence of a horizontal infill drilling pro-
gram.
The project was started in spring 2002.
At the end of the project, the oil company
found that production and injection fore-
casts matched the actual results at the end
of the first year, even during transient (non
steady state) operations.
The client's senior reservoir engineer
had used Tempest before, working for a
major oil company, simulating a carbon
dioxide injection project in West Texas.
As the only simulation engineer in the
company, he couldn't afford to focus on a
single field full time, so Questa was
engaged to work closely with him.
The field had been discovered in the
early 1990s, and developed using open
hole completions with mile long horizontal
wells, with each well draining 640 acres.
The reservoir was 10 foot deep carbon-
ate, with low oil saturation, driven by rock
and fluid expansion.
Production had peaked in 1998 and
begun to plummet after that.
The company had been investigating
using high pressure air injection and infill
drilling, using a field simulation model.
It was not possible to predict the reser-
voir's production simply by drawing a
decline curve, because it could not predict
the production rate in non-steady-state
periods, when new wells were being drilled
and wells changed from producers to
injectors.
It was necessary to use a reservoir simu-
lation tool.
Questa used nine years of production
history and air injection information from a
neighbouring field to calibrate the simula-
tion model and achieve a history match. A
6 digital energy journal - April 2007
Using Roxar's Tempest
simulator to do a field model
- John Campenella,
senior reservoir engineer,
Norwest Questa Engineering
field just to the South had been injecting
air for 20 years, and its data was used to
create relative permeability curves.
The company thought it that air would
sweep the reservoir more efficiently than
water, and less expensively than carbon
dioxide, because the reservoir rock was
tight and there was a low oil saturation in
most of the field, except at the boundary,
when water injection was used.
The model was put together by working
iteratively with the client to clarify the
reservoir geology, and tweaking the model
to account for water lost into the formation
during drilling, until a good history match
was achieved.
After that, the simulation model was
used to optimise the timing and sequence
of infill drilling, and conversion of existing
wells to air injection.
The production initially rose quickly at
the start, as new wells were being drilled at
320 acre spacing.
As the wells were being converted for
air injection, the production dropped, but
then rose again as the air began to sweep
the reservoir more efficiently.
The model was tuned and validated to
reflect drilling and conversion activity
through the fall of 2004, including 21
months of high-pressure air injection.
Then, 12 months later, measured water
and oil production rates were compared
with the forecast.
"The predictions and actual production
matched almost exactly," says John
Campanella, senior reservoir engineer with
Norwest Questa.
"We're pretty proud of that, especially
because it was during a huge transient
phase when things were changing rapidly. I
think it shows what an engineer can
accomplish by properly using an effective
tool like Tempest."
Questa's client, who requested to be
kept anonymous, told Digital Energy
Journal that the trickiest part of the simula-
tion is "getting the early response right
when you're changing operations."
"You have to get a combination of fac-
tors correct in order to forecast produc-
tion," the client said.
"By successfully predicting the response
rates over that one year period, we're pret-
ty confident we can predict the peak oil
rate and ultimate recovery in this field."
Since 2005, three drilling rigs have been
active in the field, and new infill wells are
being drilled on 160-acre spacing.
Field development plans, which call for
more than 125 horizontal wells and exten-
sions by 2009, are driven by the results of
reservoir simulation with Tempest.
Current estimates based on the simula-
tion model indicate field recovery will
more than double during that time.
Estimated primary recovery was only
between 8 and 10 percent of original oil in
place; now the client's company is predict-
ing recovery of 24 percent.
In addition to high-pressure air injec-
tion, they client is now investigating the
possibility of a hybrid air and water injec-
tion program to further improve recovery
and reduce operating expenses.
The company is also using what it
learned in this project to set up simulation
models for two older fields nearby, in order
to evaluate proper well spacing and plan
infill drilling in the next year or so.
50 year old field
In another project, Questa was contracted
to reevaluate an oil field which had been
producing for over 50 years.
The company built a simple conceptual
model, did a history match and ran the
simulation, and consequently demonstrat-
ed that the water-oil contact was some 140
feet lower than previously believed.
Questa identified a deeper target capa-
ble of producing clean oil in a section pre-
viously thought to be completely wet.
After the simulation, the well was deep-
ened, and consequently produced 100 per
cent oil for nearly six months.
"This is the type of work people could
do a lot more of, if they had the time and a
robust tool like Tempest," comments Mr
Campanella.
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45 Page 7
Questa Engineering uses
Roxar's Tempest simulator
for black oil, compositional
and thermal simulation in
projects ranging from
multicomponent coalbed
methane (CBM) to tight gas
reservoirs and enhanced
recovery operations
Using Tempest
Both Questa and its client have Tempest
software in-house, enabling them to
exchange files easily and work together
more collaboratively.
For both companies, the price of the
simulator was a key factor in choosing
Tempest, but its ability to model reservoirs
using black oil or compositional simulation
also was important.
"Coalbed methane is a big part of our
business," says Mr Campanella.
"One of the benefits we see in having
Tempest is that Roxar is continuously
increasing its functionality to handle more
complex problems." They came out with a
multi-component capability, so we can
handle cutting-edge techniques in our
CBM projects."
A lot of companies involved in CBM
don't use reservoir simulation, he notes,
which often is a big mistake.
"We see tremendous losses in produc-
tivity, especially when companies drill hori-
zontal CBM wells without simulation. Some
just poke a lot of holes in the ground and
hope.
"Often, one of two things happens.
Either they drill more wells than they need
to, wasting money unnecessarily, or they sit
on unproductive areas pumping water for
way too long because they don't under-
stand what's going on.
"CBM can be a very complex play-you're
lowering the water pressure so gas will
desorb from the coal.
"If you plug the gas content and absorp-
tion isotherm into a simulator along with
historical information on pressures, you
can figure out exactly how to get gas out
of the ground, how fast you can produce it,
and what your peaks will look like. Some
people try to do it with Excel, but that's not
very cost-effective.
"Questa consultants are currently using
Tempest for black oil, compositional and
thermal simulation, for a wide range of
projects, including multi-component
coalbed methane (CBM), tight gas reser-
voirs and enhanced recovery operations.
"We do it easily with Tempest."
Mr Campanella says he thinks reservoir
simulation should be done routinely on
many more oil and gas fields.
"Personally I think reservoir simulation
should be brought down to every engi-
neer's desktop," he says.
"We need to push simulation out of the
back room and into the mainstream where
people can use it on a daily basis."
"In addition to the big 3D projects, there
are a lot of existing fields where simulation
could be applied, but too often it gets
skipped."
Many companies avoid running simula-
tions for cost reasons.
"Most simulator licenses are priced too
high for everyone to get access to when
they need it," he says.
"Cost is a real big issue for smaller oil
companies and consulting firms like
Questa. It's extremely difficult to justify a
package that costs over $200,000, like sev-
eral we've evaluated."
"Roxar offers a reliable, full feature simu-
lator for a much lower cost," he says. "This
could be a way for companies to get simu-
lation into the hands of more engineers."
"While other simulators may have more
bells and whistles, Tempest does the job
efficiently and cost effectively on almost
anything from small, conceptual models to
full-field coalbed methane models."
"From our perspective, it has been a
great investment and provides a solid plat-
form for the type of clients we serve."
Mr Campanella notes that Roxar has
enhanced Tempest recently to include
thermal recovery methods. "Roxar has
always been extremely responsive to us
when we have issues," he adds. "They
always get back to us in a timely fashion,
and work very hard to make sure it's a
good product.
"Not only is Tempest a robust tool for
small companies like Questa, but because
it can pretty much read and write an
Eclipse deck, I think the regional offices of
major oil companies could use it too, when
their main licenses are all tied up. Roxar has
some very big Russian clients, I know."
Exploration software
About Questa
Questa offers consulting services for oil
and gas companies in its home territory of
the US and Canada, and also has projects
in Australia, Western Siberia, Kazakhstan,
Italy, Southeast Asia, China, Chile and
Colombia.
It provides services to do modelling of
coalbed methane reservoirs, or large scale
simulations, for clients which do not have
the resources or manpower to do this by
themselves.
Developments at Roxar
Raj Damodaran, a senior consultant with
Roxar's technical services Group, says that
Tempest has seen a lot of recent take-up in
Russia.
"Tempest is the market leading simula-
tor in Russia today," he claims.
"Oil companies have run models as
large as 3.5 million cells with 11,500 wells
in Western Siberia.
"Tempest is strong in postprocessing, in
visualizing 3D grids and simulation results,"
he says.
"At present, it can easily handle up to 9
million cells. But we're enhancing it to visu-
alize up to 100 million cells in the near
future."
An integrated link with Roxar's
GeoModeling software RMS makes it very
efficient for users to set up the base case in
Tempest, says Mr Damodaran.
Users can take advantage of the outputs
of RMS FracPerm - effective permeability or
individual matrix and fracture permeability
arrays - and RMS Fault Seal Analysis - trans-
missibility modifiers across faults - which
can also be incorporated in the Tempest
simulation model," he says.
Roxar is also teaming up with leading
third-party developers to offer uncertainty
management and accelerated history
matching with EnABLE software from
Energy Scitech, and surface facilities and
network optimization with GAP software
from Petroleum Experts.
A new generation parallel processing
engine will debut very soon.
April 2007 - digital energy journal 7
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45 Page 8
Exploration software
Managing your data - SMI conference
Digital Energy Journal went to SMI's information and data
management conference in London on Jan 31- Feb 1 2007,
for some in-depth discussion about how to make data
management work
he conference focussed on the
T importance of human factors, the
need to document the decision
process involved in data interpretation and
the importance of measuring the success
of data tools.
A recurring theme was that of the key
importance of middleware, sitting between
sources of data such as seismic surveys and
well logs, and the applications involved
with presentation or storage of that data.
Middleware can act to assign metadata
to each piece of information, providing
basic details such as date and location of a
survey for example, as well as important
information that can otherwise be difficult
to discover, such as the significance of a
reservoir model; whether it is a final version
or a preliminary draft.
Assigning metadata can level the play-
ing field between structured data coming
from the wellsite and unstructured data
such as emails and excel spreadsheets,
allowing both to coexist in the same infor-
mation system.
This makes it possible both to find infor-
mation more easily whatever its original
source and to store the data permanently
in a format that is easier to maintain and
more useful in the future.
It was also generally agreed that there
needs to be a culture of ownership of data
where everyone in the company feels that
managing data is part of their responsibili-
ty.
Many companies are creating data man-
agement posts alongside engineers to
make sure data is given a high priority.
A common opinion was that one of the
things data systems are bad at is capturing
the logic behind a particular conclusion.
Although the outcome of a decision
process may be recorded, a new staff mem-
ber trying to understand why a procedure
worked will gain very little. There is a need
for data systems to capture the experience
behind a decision.
A theme was the need to measure the
success of an IT project. There needs to be
a way to associate IT with actual recovery
rates for instance, so that it is easier to see
where to apply more technology and
where staff expertise is more important.
John Shearn, Schlumberger
John Shearn, consulting manager with
Schlumberger Information Solutions, talked
about measuring the benefits of a visual
collaboration centre by making staff that
book the facility enter an estimated value
8 digital energy journal - April 2007
for the meeting,
based on the
increased produc-
tion or cost savings
that could be
expected.
Although the
value is obviously
only an estimate
and does not take
John Shearn, consulting into account the
manager, Schlumberger
possibility that the
same decision would have been taking
anyway, this helps a company track the
value of the installation.
Steven Comstock, ExxonMobil
Steven Comstock Vice President, E&P
Technical Computing, Exxonmobil, talked
about the need to take advantage of the
current high oil price to make the neces-
sary investment, but
warned that there is
no 'tooth fairy' in
data management.
Many companies
are moving from a
situation where
much of their data
is in emails or excel
spreadsheets on
individual employ-
Steven Comstock, ee's hard disks.
ExxonMobil Moving to a cen-
tralised data management store is a great
benefit, but the data has to be properly
managed to be useful, there's no way to
measure success simply by volume of data,
and the cost of storing and maintaining
the data has to be taken into account.
He said that while it is easy to justify the
benefit for financial data tools like SAP, on
the upstream side the case is harder to
make, managers ask, "Did Petrel really
make the difference or was it our expertise,
our judgement."
He sees a role for career professionals
that focus on the IT aspects of geoscience,
Exxon Mobil has defined a skill area for
data management, geophysical computing
and others to emphasise the importance of
IT skills.
Donna Garbutt, Schlumberger
Donna Garbutt, production business devel-
opment manager with Schlumberger
Information Solutions, emphasised the
need for improving communication across
different disciplines.
"Sometimes production engineers and
reservoir engineers from the same compa-
ny meet each other for the first time when
they come to a conference," she said.
She said it is hard to optimise produc-
tion unless you take a multi-disciplinary
approach and look at the whole system
and how each part interacts, although
domain-specific workflows are the building
blocks for increased efficiency.
Standards are a key enabler and should
be adopted by the whole industry.
Automated data access, display and
reporting can save engineers time spent
on mundane day to day activities, releasing
them for tasks where their expertise can be
used more efficiently.
Talking about what will be the IT differ-
entiators in a landscape where everyone is
now talking about data management, she
said that predictive monitoring and pro-
active analysis of data to identify future
problems was the next step.
This could be achieved by bridging the
gap between SCADA / real-time monitor-
ing and reservoir data models, feeding live
data back into the model to update it.
Adeolu Olufemi Adeyemi, Brunei Shell
Adeolu Olufemi Adeyemi, team leader E&P
data management with Brunei Shell, talked
about the need to spend less time looking
for data and accessing and manipulating it,
and more time analysing, interpreting and
reacting to information.
The key challenge was in maintaining
quality of data and ensuring the right data
was captured and available, he said.
Data is everyone's responsibility and
there is a need to define key roles such as
Data Definition Owner (e.g. Discipline
Head), Data Value Owner (e.g. Asset
Reservoir Engineer) and Data
Custodian/Administrator (e.g. Data
Management team), he said.
Data should be treated with the same
level of importance that HSE is given.
Shell uses a colour coding system, a traf-
fic light scheme, to indicate to managers
the status of their assets in terms of data
quality.
This helps to stimulate conversation -
they want to know why they got a red light
- and it gives the necessary energy to the
data cleansing process.
Many data acquisition tasks can be per-
formed automatically and the data
analysed and fed back into control systems
to optimize production.
E&P workflows can be defined and auto-
mated to perform simple monitoring, per-
formance and risk analysis functions.
David Holmes, Landmark
David Holmes, information management
practice manager with Landmark talked
about the need for in-context integration
of information and the importance of soft-
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45 Page 9
ware vendors providing 'hooks' within
their applications to enable seamless inte-
gration of unstructured data.
He said that vendors got away in the
past with proprietary information systems
and now they compete over who is most
'open'.
He emphasised
that security princi-
ples must be strictly
applied if a compa-
ny is to have confi-
dence in a system; it
needs to know that
a search engine
function will not
reveal secure data.
David Holmes, informa-
tion management prac- Web services can
tise manager, Landmark be an integral part
of data manage-
ment but companies have to be sure that it
really adds value.
He said that while there are many stan-
dards around, few of them come with an
implementation guide and therefore they
are hard to implement in practice.
"There is a large portfolio of horizontal
commodity technology like Google search
and Documentum that can help solve the
challenges of the E&P community," he said.
"However, this technology needs to be cus-
tomised to meet the needs of the
upstream environment."
Nick Baker, Petrolink
Nick Baker, director of Petrolink
International, talked about the challenges
of capturing data from remote sites and
loading it into @DITEP, Pemex's corporate
E&P technical database.
Petrolink developed CADI (Collection
centre for digital information) as a piece of
middleware that controls the flow of data
into @DITEP.
CADI assigns metadata to each individ-
ual piece of data so that it can be more
easily categorised and retrieved. This
allows the system to produce detailed
reports including information from differ-
ent departments and disciplines and differ-
ent formats including emails
Mr Baker said that one of the main
advantages they had was that the project
was management driven.
This meant that personnel had more
involvement with the project and pushed
it to succeed, although the solution was a
hard sell at the beginning, because depart-
ment heads felt that more transparency
would take away their ability to manage
their own data.
Executive reports were one of the main
priorities and management quickly appre-
ciated the ability to review data quickly
from an offsite location through an
extranet.
Other priorities included HSE reports,
offshore rig movements and planning, and
the ability to review well data much more
quickly than previously possible.
Another tool that was proving popular
was an online 'help desk assistant' that
provided instant messenger style access to
people working at the data centre.
The system is currently employed on
one asset but will soon be expanding to
the whole of the north region of Poza Rica
Altimira on the Gulf of Mexico.
Hatem Nasr
Hatem Nasr, chief operating officer and
founder, VMonitor, talked about the diffi-
culties of installing a remote wireless data
management system in Nigeria.
He emphasised the piecemeal way in
which data systems are installed, often
involving sophisticated tools for data col-
lection or data interpretation, but without
the ability to move that data to where it's
needed.
Vmonitor has developed small credit
card size devices that can transmit around
5-6 miles in the bad terrain normal to
Nigeria offshore assets, or around 20 miles
in good conditions.
Mr Nasr emphasised the importance of
making the devices easily concealable and
self powering, as other projects had failed
because of theft of easily spotted solar
panels.
Exploration software
Katya Casey, BHP Billiton
Katya Casey of BHP
Billiton presented a
global search sys-
tem based on
Google Earth and
PetroSearch that
integrates tabular
results of the search
and a geographical
viewer. Although
most companies
Katya Casey, global appli- condemned Google
cations and information
management lead, BHP because of their
Billiton. lack of industry
expertise, she said
the company had been able to provide
them with help in setting up the system.
She said that the problems they faced
were that there was no common platform
for seamless data sharing between disci-
plines and processes, no interpretation
data with an interpretation history trail and
there was a need to establish cross-disci-
pline integrated workflows that could track
a project from new opportunity evaluation
to execution.
Although they still relied on GIS for a
working tool where precision in spatial
relationships was needed, EarthSearch met
the needs of the majority of their petrole-
um user group for a simple geographic
browser working in accord with taxonomy
based search for structured and unstruc-
tured information.
The system uses fit-for-purpose data-
bases including an ArcSDE spatial data
store rather than a huge data repository,
and a taxonomy was developed to ensure
consistent data classification that can be
used to translate between different appli-
cations. The BHP taxonomy is also mapped
to other industry standards such as POSC
and PPDM for greater interoperability.
Ms Casey talked about the problems of
integration between different software
applications, joking that sometimes it
seemed easier to move a database
between two different software supplier's
applications than between two applica-
tions from the same vendor.
April 2007 - digital energy journal 9
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45 Page 10
Control & Equipment
Feasibility of well temperature sensing
Shell did a project with LIOS Technology to assess the
feasibility and economical added value of low-cost per-
manent downhole temperature sensing in both
onshore and offshore projects in Brunei.
he aim was to come up with a low
T cost way to design and implement
permanent downhole temperature
sensing on land and offshore wells.
A lot of information can be gained from
temperature observations by DTS
(Distributed Temperature Sensing), such as
about water or gas breakthrough.
In this trial in Brunei onshore and off-
shore wells were fitted with a fibre optic
temperature sensing system.
It was possible to monitor four separate
fibres (i.e. four wells at once), with each
fibre cable up to 4km long, with a temper-
ature reading of every 1m of the cable and
a temperature resolution of 0.1 °C.
DTS technology generates a huge
quantity of data, in this trial for a specific
well about 2000 data points were gath-
ered every 30 seconds.
Longer measurement ranges (up to 16
km are currently possible), better spatial
resolutions (down to 50 cm) and shorter
measuring cycles produce even more
measurement data.
Temperature data as well as DTS related
back-scatter signals from the wells were
collected at predefined intervals and sent
via a back-bone to headquarters for analy-
sis.
The data was formatted at the wellsite
and transmitted in encrypted and com-
pressed WITSML protocol (Wellsite
Information Transfer Standard Markup
Language) based on POSC (now
Energistics) Vers. 1.3.1.
Data from some of the onshore wells
were sent to Shell headquarters by Wi-Fi as
they were just 2.5km away.
Data from the offshore well was sent by
a combination of Wi-Fi, microwave com-
munications and fibre optic landline.
At Shell HQ, the data was received and
inserted into a Shell developed DTS data-
base, optimised to handle large data
arrays; the database can then be queried
by reservoir engineers or petroleum tech-
nicians via a newly developed Excel plug-
in and other visualisation tools.
Shell used the data to analyse how the
temperature profile along the well bore is
changing, and plotted graphs of tempera-
ture against vertical depth in order to opti-
mise production. The same information
can help identifying problems with down-
hole equipment, too.
10 digital energy journal - April 2007
Slow progress
For the past decade, per-
manent optical in-well
monitoring systems have
been mostly high-end and
complex completions,
mainly deep-water wells,
LIOS Technology says.
There has been a gen-
eral hesitation to using Fibre optic sensor cable exits the well head
the technology due to
high cost of surface equip-
ment, complex installa-
tions and a lack of stan-
dard tools for data gather-
ing and analysis.
However, recent
advances in fibre optics
have made it possible to
reduce the cost of distrib-
uted temperature sensing
systems, and the develop-
ment of industry stan-
dards and electronics has
made it easier to build an
information architecture
and get the information to
the production technolo-
gist's desk. LIOS surface equipment: DTS evaluation unit with integrated WITSML
converter for encrypted data transmission to the office
But despite numerous
reported early success sto-
ries of downhole monitor-
ing deployments with
fibre optic sensors, for
both pressure and tem-
perature, the big breakthrough in oil and 10 years ago people were mainly using
gas is still awaited. electronic heat detectors mounted every
Still, with the latest developments pre- 10m, e.g. in a road tunnel. Now mainly fibre
sented at IPQC the oil industry shows optic temperature sensors are used.
renewed interest, especially in the area of The key success factors, especially in
low-cost DTS systems. this trial, have been a strong focus on tech-
In the beginning fibre has been looked nology and a qualified industrial manufac-
at with scepticism in the world of rugged turing process, with an extensive test plan
drilling equipment and harsh offshore for every product leaving the factory.
environment but over time it managed not Part of this is the compliancy with the
only to be compliant but cost effective. POSC standard which is pushed by several
The initial hesitation was constantly oil companies such as Shell.
fuelled by typical teething troubles during This results in robust and reliable prod-
the first commercial deployments, and ucts.
release of premature surface equipment The entire LIOS system has since been
with unsatisfactory performance in terms comprehensively tested by many interna-
of reliability, measurement stability and tional bodies, looking at endurance in
service life. accelerated aging environments.
LIOS Technology saw a similar pattern in Besides the oil filed application the sys-
the business for fibre optics in fire detec- tems have been used (historically) for fire
tion, which it is also involved with. detection in road and rail tunnels, and in
special hazard buildings, power cable /
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:45 Page 11

Control & Equipment

transmission line monitoring and industrial
furnace surveillance. There have been over
1,000 permanent installations since 1997.
Ground communications
One of the biggest recent changes lies in
ground communications. There is no longer
any need for anybody to actually go to the
well-site to read the data; it can be meas-
ured and sent to the office by Ethernet or
Wi-Fi, as shown in the discussed trial.
In a typical set-up the fibre optic cable
is interrogated by a surface unit, which
then sends the data to a central database,
so production engineers can analyse it.
Interfaces are being standardised, both
for hardware and software.
A new interface has been developed
by POSC (now Energistics) called
WITSML1.3.1.
The footprint and power consumption
of well-head readout units has changed,
from being bulky cupboards to fitting
into an industrial standardised 19-inch
rack.
A further improvement is that no PC
is necessary on-site as the communica-
tion hard- and software based on an
embedded Linux system is fully inte-
grated into the DTS readout unit.

This article is based on papers

by LIOS Technology and Shell
at IQPC's Intelligent Wells
conference in Kuala Lumpur,
August 2006

Gathering temperature data to the surface

Aramco VSAT contact to Advantech

Roxar and SONAR
in Nigeria
joint venture
Roxar has made a joint venture with
Nigeria oil service company SONAR.
Photo shows Roxar's CEO, Sandy
Esslemont (left) and Sona-Ari Jack,
managing director of SONAR Limited
(right)
www.roxar.com
Roxar has signed a joint venture with
SONAR Limited of Nigeria to meet the
increasing demand in Nigeria and
West Africa for Roxar's reservoir man-
agement and optimization solutions.
The joint venture will be called
Roxar-SONAR.
Under the terms of the agree-
ment,a service center has been set
up in Lagos,Nigeria to provide sales
and local customer support and
serve as a training center for Roxar's
entire software portfolio.
SONAR is a full service company
providing a wide range of services
to the oil and gas industry,ranging
from seismic data processing,and
reservoir modeling through to busi-
ness development activities.
Track personnel
down to 15cm
on rigs -
Salem
Automation
www.salemautomation.com
UK oil and gas automation company
Salem Automation has launched a
system which enables personnel's
location to be tracked down to 15cm
on oil rigs, and other locations which
require all equipment to be 'intrinisi-
cally safe' (ie not having a high
enough electric current to create a
spark).
The system, called Salem S3PT,
will make it possible to precisely
determine how many people,
and who they are, on different
platform areas.
It can interface with heliports,
to determine who is onboard
specific helicopter flights.
Salem has made an agree-
ment with location system ven-
dor Ubisense to incorporate its
location systems into its automa-
tion system.
Ubisense can deliver data
about the location of a person or
object down to 15 cm, which is
much more accurate than other
systems, which are often based
on RFID, Salem says.
Salem says it tested a number
of different location systems but
only the Ubisense one was accu-
rate and reliable enough.
The system uses ultrawide
band (UWB) technology.
www.advantechsatnet.com
Saudi Aramco has awarded a contract
to build a VSAT satellite
communications network in Saudi
Arabia to Advantech Satellite
Networks of Montreal.
The contract is for 'hundreds'
of fixed, maritime and vehicle
VSAT systems, which will be used
in the Saudi Arabian desert to
support existing operations and
Honeywell UAE contract with Dolphin
Energy
www.honeywell.com/ps
Honeywell has won a $13.5m con-
tract with Dolphin Energy in the
United Arab Emirates, to supply a
Manufacturing Execution System for
Dolphin's automation system for
plant and pipelines.
The system help Dolphin
Energy streamline its data han-
dling, and provide better
checking and reconciliation of
data, and reduce manual data
entry.
As a result, Dolphin will
know a lot more about what is
going on, which should help it
exploration. It will be used for
communications of both voice
and data. Saudi Aramco has
been using VSAT since 2001.
Saudi company Noviasat will
also be involved in installation
and deployment of the system.
The system will use DVB-RCS
technology, which enables the
satellite bandwidth to be shared
between the different terminals.
Advantech
Satellite Networks
VSAT equipment
being supplied to
Aramco
optimise processes and
increase production.
It will cover will cover
Dolphin Energy's entire gas
production, processing and dis-
tribution network, including
two offshore oil platforms in
Qatar's North gas field, onshore
processing facilities in Ras
Laffan, and an undersea
pipeline to Abu Dhabi and
Fujairah.
Honeywell will supply its
Business FLEX automation sys-
tem, integrated with third party
technologies.

April 2007- digital energy journal 11

dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 12
Control & Equipment
Change management and the digital oilfield
Getting the digital oilfield right needs heavy duty change management. What is change management?
Mike Campbell and Dutch Holland of Houston's Holland and Davis explain
igital Oilfield (DOF) implementations
D have a major handicap from the
start.
IT assets are still not treated by business
the same as hard assets, eg drilling rigs or
downhole equipment.
For example, upon commissioning of a
deepwater platform, what are the odds that
operations will not begin immediately?
Zero.
Yet, upon "Go Live" on many IT imple-
mentations, will business users be prepared
and the new system fully utilized? Time and
again, odds are 50-50 at best.
For all the millions invested, IT implemen-
tation failures are accepted with only a "not
again…" shrug and no calls for accountabili-
ty.
Why? Offshore platforms are "business
stuff" making money for the company, so
companies better be ready to fully employ
them.
On the other hand, IT implementations
are messy and chaotic "cost stuff" -- clearly
not requiring a full speed ahead approach to
be ready for full utilization at "Go Live."
A different way to view IT
The challenge for companies desiring to
maximize their digital oilfield investments is
to spend time and energy altering the way
they view IT assets.
Since they must "change the context" in
which digital oilfield projects are being
implemented, that will take industrial-
strength Change Management.
Ten differences
Specifically, what comprises the Top 10 con-
textual differences between "hard assets"
and "IT assets" and why should company
management be concerned?
Each difference can potentially result in
not just a degraded digital oilfield imple-
mentation but an outright, costly failure.
Decision point commitment
Difference No. 1 centers on pro forma com-
mitment at the decision point.
When a new offshore platform is commis-
sioned, its estimated volume is added to for-
mal business projections for the scheduled
"On line" date.
When IT projects are commissioned, pro-
jected results are often omitted from the
company's formal dollar projections even
though there may be a "business case" that
included numbers.
The difference between a platform con-
struction and an IT implementation is that
the platform quite naturally embodies a
hard asset mindset and the industry can rel-
atively easily simulate system changes with
resultant consequences.
Therefore, digital oilfield managers must
make the business case as tangible and
transparent as possible and then reflect the
expected business result of the IT imple-
mentation in the "official" business pro
forma.
A business committed on paper to deliv-
12 digital energy journal - April 2007
er results is far more likely to be ready to
fully use an IT asset at Go Live.
Expectation of results
Difference No. 2 revolves around a historical
basis to envision tangible results.
Largely, digital oilfield IT implementa-
tions are stigmatised before even figurative-
ly getting off the ground, with many
employees having only negative recollec-
tions of IT implementations and that nega-
tivity being very real.
Many companies have a woeful track
record in successfully implementing IT sys-
tems that work, or actively used company-
wide, or actually make money for the com-
pany.
Breaking a string of implementation fail-
ures only happens one way: management
commits to slam dunk the next IT initiative
and each after that.
Failure to break the losing streak will
surely condemn many high potential DOF
implementations from their start.
Lack of accountability
Difference No. 3 is especially stinging: lack of
accountability for IT utilization in general.
While failure to use a non-IT asset would
be seen as insubordinate, unsatisfactory and
punishable by termination, failure to use (or
learn to use) IT assets, which typically are
not cheap, is not even a performance defi-
ciency. Nor is a management failure to fully
prepare a business team for using IT assets
at "Go Live."
The solution is more than re-inventing
language.
Company Assets should be defined not
just as hard assets such as those at an E&P
site but all assets for doing the company's
business including IT.
Concretely, this means that failure to
wring every possible drop of productivity
from new IT implementation should be
treated like failure to fully utilize a new off-
shore platform.
Perception
Difference No. 4 focuses on turning around
the stereotypical perception of an IT imple-
mentation.
Unfortunately, that's no small task.
If company personnel just thought IT
implementations had occasional, expected
glitches, the outlook for success might be
brighter. Not typically.
Instead management seems to consider
IT implementations as messy and chaotic by
nature and only completed in some shape
or form because workers supposedly "figure
it all out."
Scrap "Easter Bunny" thinking
In fact, it's well beyond time for oilfield com-
panies to scrap that Easter Bunny happy-
ending thinking.
Instead, provide an apples/apples hard
dollar comparison showing everyone why a
new, improved
approach is
called for.
On one side,
calculate and
make transpar-
ent the costs
associated with
the failure-rid-
den "Let them
figure it out"
Dutch Holland, CEO of way.
Holland & Davis LLC On the other
side, benchmark
successful implementations and employ
proven templates for both preparing the IT
system for the company and preparing the
company for the IT system.
Deliver expectations
Difference No. 5 is virtually astounding in its
simplicity: delivering clear top management
expectations of full utilization of implement-
ed IT systems/applications.
What CEO would feel compelled to tell
offshore personnel he/she expected them to
begin using the new platform upon its com-
pletion?
Yet, that assumed expectation does not
apply with IT implementations.
Believe it or not, top management must
openly state and reiterate the company's
intention to have all business units and all
employees fully utilize the new IT asset upon
"Go Live."
Not personal property
Difference No. 6 involves an issue that
should not occur in the first place: personal
control at the desktop. As a component in
successful IT implementations, the slate
needs to be wiped clean on a nagging work-
force problem.
Users believe that their computer desk-
top is theirs personally (like the family pic-
tures in their cubicle), so they're not required
to "get with the (overall) program."
This individual hijacking of a corporate
asset should be unplugged at the earliest
opportunity by strongly educating users
that IT systems and applications are compa-
ny assets accessed from a company desktop
-- not their personal property any more than
a valve on an offshore platform belongs to a
roughneck.
The "invisible" asset
Contextual difference No. 7 is keyed to visi-
bility / tangibility of the asset during imple-
mentation.
Amid all the reasons why IT implementa-
tions usually fail, one of the foremost is
"invisibility."
Whether the new offshore platform is
being viewed in a fabrication yard or during
its deepwater installation, it's an oversize
visual experience. Not so with IT.
When users get beyond seeing or pictur-
ing desktops or maybe even servers, all back
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 13
room workings may as well be completely
invisible.
Given that absence of any visual stimuli
for users, how do they get ready?
Take the "connect the dots" approach.
That may include prototyping the com-
pany's IT system, developing guided tours
to see the new system at work (even
though they cannot actually see the "gears
meshing"), and/or preparing a robust com-
munication "show & tell" program.
Help ensure that all employees have visi-
bility of the upcoming digital oilfield appli-
cation so that they can appreciate their
need to thoroughly prepare for its daily
business use.
Lack of service providers
Difference No. 8 involves dealing with the
lack of a full spectrum of service providers.
In the oil industry, vendors have been in
place for decades to build new offshore
platforms and to help prepare business
employees to use them. And they have in-
depth experience to handle the enormous
task and its complexity.
Unfortunately, the IT industry is not
always well-equipped to handle new IT
implementations with the level of vendor
support needed to ready business person-
nel for full utilization.
Fortunately, the solution is neither exotic
nor impractical.
Oilfield companies should create transi-
tion teams (from old to new IT systems) to
help ease the changeover from a legacy
way of doing business to the way business
needs to be done with a new digital oilfield
application: IT's version of SWAT teams that
swoop in and work with users to best facili-
tate success.
Resman - using chemicals to detect location
of water ingress
Statoil Innovation has increased
its shareholding in RESMAN, a
company which is developing
technology to find out where
water is finding its way into an
oil well, using chemicals.
he technology works like this.
T Slightly different chemicals are
placed in different places along
the well.
Control & Equipment
Clarify the strategy
Difference No. 9 centers on failure to clarify
the company's implementation strategy.
Either top management will "select and
direct" a digital oilfield implementation (like
an airline's management directs the use of a
new flight procedure) or management will
give permission for a digital oilfield applica-
tion's adoption (like management giving
permission to accept a new company insur-
ance program).
Management's decision to fully use an
asset for a business purpose leads to a
deployment strategy.
Whereas, permission to try, assess or
experiment with an IT asset leads to only an
adoption assumption with a stretch-out
"normal distribution" acceptance.
For the solution, look no further than
proceeding to: clarify the business situation,
get a management decision to direct or per-
mit and then apply an applicable, proven
implementation model.
If management will accept a two-year
diffusion experience until the entire organi-
zation is using a digital oilfield asset, just
give permission to experiment, without fol-
lowing with a direction to deploy.
Not assuming control
Difference No. 10 lands with a thud: failure
of the business side to assume full control
of the IT asset and its implementation.
This downside occurs for a reason that
practically that every computer user can
identify with.
GeekSpeak intimidates most people,
resulting in nobody taking firm responsibili-
ty and control of an implementation.
The solution is an absolutely essential
The chemical will send a few tracer mol-
ecules up to the well head if it comes into
contact with water. It will not send up any
molecules if there is only oil in the well.
If tracer molecules are received at the
well head, they can be analysed, to work
out which tracer chemical they are from.
By knowing where that chemical was
positioned in the well, you can work out
where the water ingress was.
The chemicals are doped into plastic
rods, which are attached to the production
tubing or sand screens (see picture), so it is
possible to know exactly where they are in
the well.
The system is potentially much cheaper
than downhole monitoring devices,
Statoil says.
Plastic rods, soaked in a tracer chemi-
cal, are attached to sand screens
before they are put in the well.The
chemical has a slightly different com-
position for each sand screen. If water
enters the well around the rods, a
trace of the chemical will flow to the
surface, and it will be possible to
analyse which sand screen released
chemical and hence where in the well
water is entering the tubing
one, yet still goes down about as well as cas-
tor oil.
Bring the business/IT alignment issue
front and centre, demanding that the com-
pany's IT side speak the business language
and meet business/output requirements.
Heavy-duty Change Management
With these ten issues continually clanging
together, heavy-duty Change Management
is definitely called for.
Employee attitudes about IT must be
changed to best ensure that digital oilfield
implementations are successful and not
degraded or complete failures.
Picture a farmer's field. The dirt must be
well prepared or the seeds planted will not
thrive.
Today's digital oilfield implementation
environment is like the field that must be
prepared for digital oilfield implementa-
tions to have the best chance to thrive.
Heavy-duty change will be required in
many companies to correct contextual fac-
tors that are limiting digital oilfield success.
Heavy-duty change management is not
seminar-speak, it's the tool companies will
need to prepare the soil in reaping full digi-
tal oilfield benefits.
Mike Campbell, PMP, is a Managing
Director, and Dutch Holland, PhD, is
CEO of Houston-based Holland &
Davis LLC (www.hdinc.com/dof.htm ),
energy management consultants for
more than three decades who spe-
cialize in technology implementation.
A pilot project running 3.5 years began
in June 2005, with 9 different tracers
installed in an oil well at the URD field, off-
shore Norway in July 2006. The actual well
came onstream in August 2006. A follow-up
project was started Autumn 2006 with a
scope of finding better tracers, - easier to
detect and more numerous. The project at
18m NOK funding ($2.9m).
Statoil Innovation, a subsidiary of Statoil,
is now the largest shareholder in Resman
with a 42 per cent stake.
Statoil brought together the Foundation
for Scientific and Industrial Research at the
Norwegian Institute of Technology
(SINTEF) and the Norwegian Institute for
Energy Technology (IFE) to set the compa-
ny up.
RESMAN will test it out in a Statoil instal-
lation - and then roll it out commercially.
"We're in dialogue with operators over
large parts of the world, and the response
has been huge," says Asle Jostein Hovda,
investment manager at Statoil Innovation.
This is Statoil Innovation's seventh
investment, since the subsidiary was creat-
ed in 2001.
www.resman.co.uk
April 2007- digital energy journal 13
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 14
Control & Equipment
Honeywell's Digital Oilfield Platform
Jon Helsingeng, marketing manager for oil and gas Europe,
Middle East and Africa, Honeywell, tells the story of
Honeywell's new system to use automation data
olutions for improved knowledge
S management are continuously devel-
oping to give oil companies better
access to real time information.
The visualisation of the information is
gradually becoming more advanced, help-
ing the operation and business manage-
ment achieve a clearer overview, which in
turn enables them to make improved deci-
sions.
However an often underestimated task
is how to organise the work to take full
advantage of the information technology
and also the change management effort
required to introduce new solutions.
Honeywell is one of the major suppliers
of information management systems to the
oil and gas industry as well as to other
process industries.
The strategy has been to deliver solu-
tions covering the entire information chain
from the sensor or transmitter in the field
to the decision maker in the office, creating
valuable insights for different functions and
management levels in the oil company.
A crucial part of this is to create mean-
ingful information for the operators and
decision makers.
Production data combined with plan-
ning data easily can visualise problem areas
that need action either from the process
operator or the reservoir engineer.
Tailor made
Every oil field is different, with a different
number of wells, depth, pressure, produc-
tion rates. There will be different challenges
to keep up the production rate and to
increase the recovery rate.
Therefore a key requirement for a
knowledge management system is that
solutions can easily be tailor made. It must
also be easy to make changes to during the
lifetime of the field.
First of all the data collection, infrastruc-
ture and repository must be robust and
upgradeable in the future. The system must
be able to take advantage of new techno-
logy.
Software platform
To meet these requirements Honeywell has
developed a software platform and suite of
applications relevant for use on digital oil-
fields.
It is called Production Control Center
(PCC) and serves as the primary platform
and user portal.
The framework is based on modern
technology, utilising as many off the shelf
components as possible such as
Microsoft.Net.
Within the framework, Honeywell stan-
dard advanced Business Flex solution set
(for processes, assets and people) and oil
14 digital energy journal - April 2007
and gas specific applications are hosted as
application plug-ins. This is also valid for
3rd party applications.
The customer can take advantage of the
best that is available on the market and still
achieve commonality and structure.
The knowledge must be shared
between different locations (e.g.
offshore,onshore) and the right information
must flow between different work func-
tions.
This is accomplished by using the com-
mon code components for applications
development.
The applications developed in the
framework have a common "look and feel".
All applications have the same standard for
menus, report layout, export to Excel func-
tionality.
The framework has also integrated secu-
rity handling as a standard functionality.
Security access to all applications or spe-
cific screens can be configured for all appli-
cations, making the data available only to
the right people in the organisation.
Applications within the Production
Control Centre use a common enterprise
data model.
This framework includes general func-
tionality such as Common Data Model; data
collection and storage of data; visualisation
of the historical data / reports; trending, tag
exploring; generation and storage of
reports, automatically or on demand;
export of reports or data to Microsoft Excel
files; approval and digital signature
processes for data and reports.
To enable the easiness and flexibility the
oil companies requires to further develop
useful applications the framework provides
common libraries, base classes, infrastruc-
ture for data handling and security, and
guidelines for development.
All of these functionalities in the frame-
work simplify development and mainte-
nance of the applications itself.
The figure below shows a typical report
layout from a North Sea platform showing
some of the functionality.
A typical automation report layout for the North Sea
Jon Helsingeng, market-
ing manager for oil and
gas Europe, Middle East
and Africa, Honeywell
Operations Management suite
There are a number of supporting tools to
address visualisation, calculations, event
detection and alerting requirements.
One example of such a tool suites is
Honeywell's "Operations Management"
(OM), an integrated suite of software which
improves oil and gas clients work processes.
The overall Operations Management
suite is derived from research of the
Abnormal Situation Management (ASM)
Consortium (www.asmconsortium.com),
which for over 10 years has been investigat-
ing causes of abnormal events and estab-
lishing best practices process manufacturers
can employ to avoid or minimise their
impact in different areas of operations.
Oil and gas clients along with Honeywell
are founding members of the consortium.
There are several modular applications
within the Operations Management tool
suite.
The Alarm Configuration Manager (ACM)
is one example. This is the master repository
for all limits and boundary you can operate
the process plant within. The limits can
include monitoring of dry tree wells, sub-sea
wells, risers and pipelines.
The Alarm Configuration Manager docu-
ments the source of limits, operator respons-
es, consequences of deviations and maps
facility limits to Distributed Control System
(DCS) alarm values.
Also included are components for man-
aging changes with access security and
audit trails.
Operations monitoring
Another example is the Operating
Instructions (OI) and Operations
Monitoring(OM) tools that provide function-
ality for handling and monitoring operating
targets that are changing. This is a typical
operational situation on e.g. an offshore
platform.
New targets can be created from scratch
or by a model.
Operating Instructions communicates
changes to the operational plan. This could
be new set points for choke valves or other
operating targets.
The Operations Monitoring module mon-
itors plant performance, against operating
models and summarises deviations.
Deviations are passed on to the Operating
Instructions module where production oper-
ators enter reasons of deviations.
Also, the Operating Instructions -
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 15

Control & Equipment

Operations Monitoring set of modules pro-
vide a history of previous shifts abnormal
events and instructions for returning oper-
ators and supervisors.
This tool facilitates continuous coverage
through software control and operator
interaction for shift change procedures,
escalation procedures, and communication
protocols.
The operation management
offshore/onshore can easily evaluate the
production history and use these tools for
improving the production.
There are also more standard tools
included to handle knowledge between
shifts such as Operator Logbook, Alarm and
Event analyst.
Statoil
Statoil's Kvitebjorn platform, which is
designed for minimum manning, has taken
many of these applications into use and
the information is also available at their col-
laboration centre onshore.
Their approach has been to make sure
that their work processes are aligned with
the technology available.
That leads to the next big challenge
with regard to systems for improved knowl-
edge management - how to implement
them in the organisation.
Change management
Typical challenges during the first period of
operation of an oil and gas platform is to
make effective use of all the information
management system tools/applications
that are becoming available.
For new operators one their greatest
challenges is dealing with an ever more
complex and turbulent information envi-
ronment.
A relentless pace of changes, unpre-
dictability and interdependence creates
uncertainties. For oil companies to max-
imise the growth opportunities of techno-
logical advances, they need to develop the
capacity to integrate the technological
developments with the social component
(people) of the organisation.
Previous experience has taught us that
implementing new technology without
due recognition and management of the
human and organisational dimensions can
be fatal. One should not underestimate
what is required to use and maintain the
new technology.
If this is not well planned, implementa-
tion of new technology can eventually
result in a limited realisation of the antici-
pated and promised business benefits. It
can even lead to safety issues if intended
work processes are not fulfilled.
The three main deliverables of a change
management process or initiative are opti-
mise acceptance, maximise readiness, and
assure success of implementation.
Documentation for the Change
Management function includes the follow-
ing:
What initiates a process and who is
involved in the process; who is the steward
of the process, i.e. who is the process owner
(champion) with the responsibility for mak-
ing sure the process is completed properly;
when the process takes place, i.e. if there
are scheduled activities
What sources of information are needed
as input to the process; how the process
obtains input information; what activities
occur along the process path.
Who conducts or oversees the activities;
what communications or interactions are
required with other processes; what
approval structure is in place for each step
in the process.
What is the output of the process; where
the process output is distributed (e.g. stor-
age of information or documents, mes-
sages and alerts produced); what com-
pletes the process execution or pause it
until the next iteration.

Roxar secures downhole monitoring

contracts in Middle East
www.roxar.com
Roxar has signed two multi-
million US dollar contracts to
supply 43 dual downhole
gauge PDMS (Permanent
Downhole Monitoring
Systems) to a leading Middle
Eastern operator for delivery
by October 2007.
The Roxar downhole
HM gauge transmits
digitized pressure and
temperature data to the
surface and is a key
component of Roxar
PDMS. Roxar's downhole monitoring system
Iridium plans for next satellites
www.iridium.com
Handheld satellite communications
system Iridium has unveiled its plans
for its next satellite constellation,
which will cost $2bn to construct and
deploy.
Iridium describes its key mar-
kets as the maritime, aviation,
government/military, emer-
gency/humanitarian services,
mining, forestry, oil and gas, heavy
equipment, transportation and
utilities.
Iridium's annual earnings
before interest, tax, depreciation
and amortisation are currently
$60m, which indicates that a fair
proportion of the investment will
not be financed from the compa-
ny's current earnings.
Iridium says that the remain-
der will be sought from external
investors, including the capital
markets and strategic business
partners.
The new satellites promise
high bandwidth data and short
messaging services as well as
voice. It will have an IP based
architecture.
The satellites will be able to
communicate with other satellite
systems, and Iridium will retain its
technology of having data
bounced from satellite to satel-
lite, rather than just from ground
to satellite and back.
Iridium has also recently
invested in new ground stations
in Fairbanks, AK and Svalbard,
Norway.
Saudi Aramco and WellDynamics join to
develop new technologies
www.saudiaramco.com
Saudi Aramco and WellDynamics, a
leading provider of intelligent
upstream completion technology,
are jointly developing a range of new
technologies for multizone, multilat-
eral intelligent completions.
The project consists of the
development of a telemetry sys-
tem coupled to a subsurface con-
trol module which will control
flow and transmit data from and
to each "smart" lateral to the
main bore, and ultimately to the
surface.The system reduces tech-
nical risk by taking advantage of
WellDynamics' SmartWell prod-
ucts for basic monitoring and
flow control functions within the
laterals.
"This joint development proj-
ect is part of Saudi Aramco's
overall vision to develop Extreme
Reservoir Contact (ERC) wells,"
said Amin Nasser,Vice President
of Petroleum Engineering &
Development, Saudi Aramco.
"ERC wells are intelligent multilat-
eral wells that do not require
individual control lines from the
wellhead to each lateral or zone,
and therefore, theoretically allow
an unlimited number of intelli-
gent laterals," added Nasser.
Saudi Aramco claims to have
pioneered intelligent Maximum
Reservoir Contact (MRC) wells,
which attain more than 5 km of
contact with the reservoir
through intelligent laterals off
the main wellbore that can be
partially or fully opened and
closed from the surface. Saudi
Aramco's most recently devel-
oped field, Haradh Increment III,
completed in early 2006 with a
production capacity of 300,000
bbls/day, relies on 32 intelligent
MRC wells that use
WellDynamics' SmartWell intelli-
gent completion technology.
"Intelligent MRC wells can
only have a limited number of
laterals (four to five), because
each downhole control valve
requires a mechanical control
line to the wellhead. ERC wells
would relax this requirement.We
envision ERC wells of fifty to one
hundred smart laterals that
would efficiently drain the reser-
voir and ultimately maximize
economic recovery," explained
Muhammad Saggaf, Manager of
Saudi Aramco's EXPEC Advanced
Research Center (ARC).

April 2007- digital energy journal 15

dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 16

Production software news

Hydro invests in Norwegian
database technology
www.sharecat.com
Hydro is investing NOK 22 million in
the Norwegian company Tektonisk
and its ShareCat database technology
ShareCat is used by a number
of international oil and gas pro-
ducers to share information
between suppliers and subcon-
tractors.
ShareCat provides operators,
suppliers and subcontractors with
access to information about
equipment on oil and gas installa-
tions.The technology is internet-
based and enables all the partici-
pants in the supply chain to
obtain and deliver information
from a shared location.
Tektonisk is based in Bergen
and also runs offices in Stavanger
and London.The company has
signed agreements with a num-
ber of operators on the
Norwegian continental shelf in
recent years and ShareCat has
been used in connection with
the Ormen Lange development,
for which Hydro is operator.
Four new consultants
at Paras tomer service culture and intro-
www.paras-consulting.com
Oil and gas IT consultancy Paras
Consulting has employed four new
consultants.
Michael Woodward joins
Paras Consulting from
Capgemini, with experience on
managing complex projects.
Phil Challis has experience
building relationships between
business and IT, developing a cus-
ducing streamlined manage-
ment processes.
Carol Dye was previously an
independent consultant. She has
a background in both oil and gas
and pharmaceuticals, with skills
in project management, analysis
and change management.
Vicky Garrard is a geophysi-
cist, who was previously a
records management consultant
with Tribal Technology.
total cost of ownership and
provide a new level of interoper-
ability and standards."

Knowledge Reservoir version 2.5

of Gulf of Mexico knowledge base
www.knowledgereservoir.com production or ready for
Houston oil and gas engineering con- development.
sultancy Knowledge Reservoir has It provides information about
released version 2.5 of its internet reservoir performance, metrics,
knowledge base of Gulf of Mexico analogs, lessons learned and
deepwater reservoir performance. regional knowledge.
The knowledge base has The knowledge base is used
detailed information about 63 by oil companies and their part-
ners operating in the Gulf of
mature oilfields, including 314 Mexico. Knowledge Reservoir
ShareCat's management team. Trond Even Dagsvik (CEO), reservoirs and 353 wells. Data
Dag Pettersen (MD), and Knut Dagsvik (director) says that its clients have found
for 50 new fields is included in ways to improve productivity and
the latest version. There is infor- improve their processes, as a
mation about result of information in the
all deepwater reservoirs either in knowledge base.
SAP creates 8th oil and gas industry
group
www.sap.com/industries/oil-gas/index.epx Frigstad Offshore uses Star software
SAP has put together its 8th oil and Holly Corporation wanted to
gas industry group, to work together be able to integrate its trading www.sismarine.com already has a good portfolio of
and risk management system Singapore drilling contractor rig customers, and we have
on creating new oil and gas software with its back office system, so that already seen - by the speed with
systems. it could use real time (live) data Frigstad Offshore has bought a fleet
management software system from which they have gotten the sys-
Oil companies in the network when doing financial valuations tem up and running in our
include Conoco Phillips, Holly with physical movements of oil. Star information Systems.
Corporation, Petrobras, Statoil and Another project was with the It will install Star's Centralised offices - how quick and service-
Tesoro. digital oilfield, where SAP and Purchasing System (CPS) in its oriented they are."
Vendors in the network include Accenture worked together to head office, then roll it out on its
Accenture, HP, IBM, Implico, KSS, create a system which could be drilling rigs world wide.
LogicaCMG, Meridium, NRX, used to help speed up drilling
Quorum Business Solutions, wells and manage the mainte- It will also implement Star's
TechniData,Triple Point and nance. Information and Planning
Vendavo. SAP worked with Implico to System, which includes a
SAP has similar networks in develop a software tool to man- planned maintenance system
other industries it serves, including age downstream (road) distribu- and a safety management sys-
banking, chemicals, consumer tion, which could make sure that tem.
products, high tech, retail, public petrol stations don't run out of Dag Frigstad, administration
sector and forest and paper. petrol and road tanker utilisation
Specific oil and gas projects the is optimised, in the face of chang- manager with Frigstad
group is working on include devel- ing sales volumes and prices. Offshore, says that he chose
opment tools for integrating "Achieving leading-edge inno- Star due to its "high perform-
exploration and production, land vation requires the input of more ance, ability to scale the solu-
lease management, real time gas than one business entity and IT
allocation management, asset life- vendor," says Bob Martin, SAP tion, their spirit of entrepre-
cycle management, distribution / integration project manager, neurship and innovation.
terminal management, commodi- Conoco Phillips and chairman of "They are strong on product
ty trading and price optimisation / the SAP Oil & Gas Global Industry development, strong on deliv-
margin management. Advisory Council.
One project which has already "We see promise in this ery and strong on customer
grown out of the community is a approach to enable us to increase service. They know the impor- Dag Frigstad, administration manager,
trading and risk management sys- our productivity and supply chain tance of following up a rela- Frigstad Offshore, next to a model of
tem, developed by SAP and Triple performance, lower total cost of tively small customer," he says. the S/S Frigstad Oslo - the world's most
Point Technology for petroleum ownership and provide a new powerful drilling rig, due for delivery in
refiner / marketer Holly level of interoperability and stan- "We like to use reliable suppliers 2009, which will use Star Information
Corporation. dards." with a good track record. SIS Systems fleet management software

16 digital energy journal - April 2007

dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 17
Baker Hughes drilling
information system cuts costs
Baker Hughes has implemented an information management system
for its drilling operations, which enables lessons learned to be
recorded and retrieved by other engineers around the the company.
By Phil Perry, Knowledge Systems Specialist, Hughes Christensen
n oil company client of Baker Hughes
A had a problem when drilling offshore
Brazil. It wanted to work out how it
could clean the holes more efficiently and
remove cuttings to optimise drilling speed
and subsequent casing operations.
To try to find a solution, during drilling
planning, one of Baker Hughes' engineers
looked up the company's information man-
agement system, and ran a search under the
criteria well type = extended reach; wellbore
inclination = 45 to 80 degrees; bottomhome
assembly = rotary steerable; and problem=
hole cleaning.
From the search, the engineer found 11
lessons from similar drilling environments in
the North Sea, West Africa and South East
Asia.
There were reports on a number of
driling failures, caused by drilling too fast for
the available mud flow rate. This resulted in
reduced hole cleaning efficiency, leading to
stuck pipe and a bottomhole assembly get-
ting lost in the hole.
There was a well documented solution
for the problem - the control the rate of drill
penetration, so there would not be excessive
build up of cuttings between the drill bit
and the hole (annulus).
After analysing these lessons, for the off-
shore Brazil project, the engineer recom-
mended a drilling plan that would match
the rate of penetration of the drillbit to the
available mud flow rate.
This would reduce lost time, and ensure
good drilling speed, logging and casing
operations.
By implementing the plan, drilling time
was reduced by 70 per cent, 65 per cent and
receive the latest news
and feature articles
in your inbox every Monday
35 per cent in each hole section, Baker
Hughes reports.
Application Knowledge Store
The aim of Baker Hughes' system, called
Application Knowledge Store (AKS), is to
enable re-use of previous experience,
repeating past successes and avoiding past
mistakes.
Drilling engineers can find information
on the web about lessons learned and per-
formance achieved, in a drilling environ-
ment similar to the one they are currently
working on.
Information can be retrieved in various
ways. This includes regular knowledge
updates sent to the whole company, or
updates about specific types of drilling sent
whenever they are available.
Users can quickly search for information
they want, eg by searching for location,
operator, field or knowledge category.
So for example, they can find the answer
to questions such as, "“What do we know
about drilling hard, 20,000 psi uniaxial com-
pressive strength limestone formations with
seven-bladed polycrystalline diamond com-
pact bits on rotary steerable assemblies
using oil-based mud?”
If an engineer is working outside his
realm of expertise, he can quickly obtain
good documentation about how to drill
there.
Contributing information
Engineers are encouraged to contribute
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or understanding gained through their
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Production software
Phil Perry, Knowledge
Systems Specialist,
Hughes Christensen
experience.
They can write lessons about potential
problems, giving information about previ-
ous operating practises, and recommenda-
tions of how to overcome problems.
For documentation of lessons to be
included in the system, they must contain
information which is significant, valid and
contains reusable performance related to
technical information.
Once a technical lesson has been submit-
ted, a team of drilling optimisation experts
reviews it, before it is agreed as part of the
company knowledge base.
The reviewing team can check the sub-
missions are solutions to valid problems,
written in a style which someone unfamiliar
to the situation can understand.
The lessons learned are categorised
using a sophisticated taxonomy, so they can
be quickly retrieved later by people who
need them.
OASIS
The service is part of OASIS, Baker Hughes'
engineering and consulting service for
drilling.
In OASIS, drilling specialists are drawn
from across the company to evaluate diffi-
cult drilling situations.
They can study data from neighbouring
wells (offset) and investigate the conditions
underground, so they can put together
drilling plans.
They make a detailed analysis of the
whole drilling system and wellbore environ-
ment, and try to predict problems which
might occur.
April 2007- digital energy journal 17
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 18
Production software
Bolo Systems-115 per cent annual growth
Colorado oil and gas accounting software company Bolo Systems
reports that it has grown 115 per cent in the past twelve months,
comparing its 2006 revenues with 2005.
his means it has more than doubled
T its revenues. 2005 growth was even
greater, 150 per cent compared to
2004. CEO Rick Slack attributes the remark-
able growth to oil companies spending
some of their recent healthy earnings on
looking at ways to optimise their internal
processes.
Another driver for the growth is execu-
tives increasingly wanting to have the best
possible picture of how their company is
performing day by day, continuously track-
ing production, revenue and expenses
against the budget, rather than wait for
monthly accounts. Sarbanes Oxley has also
encouraged executives to spend more time
looking at their accounts.
Oil and gas operations are also becom-
ing increasingly complex, due to the large
amount of asset trading which is going on,
and companies often pursuing smaller
reservoirs.
Many oil and gas companies have put a
lot of effort into integrating their geophysi-
cal and geological systems, and are now
moving their focus onto integrating their
accounting systems, he says.
The company builds 'executive dash-
board' tools into its software, which can
supply executives with the most important
information about how their company is
running at a glance.
Clients include Energy Partners (EPL) in
New Orleans, Energy Resource Technology
PetroAcct , Legend Natural Gas II,
Petrohawk and J.M. Huber.
The company has observed that many
oil and gas companies are using a patch-
work of different databases for accounting,
How service orientated architecture works
Tracey Dancy of Paras Consulting explains how oil and gas companies can use service orientated
architecture to get the latest data in the right format whenever they want
he challenge facing both oil compa-
T nies and service companies is to find
a sustainable integration solution for
multiple sources and types of data.
The acquisition, storage and access
capability of data at every stage of the
exploration and production process has to
be high on the priority list of any producer
aspiring to enhance capacity.
All oil companies have existing technol-
ogy, which to a certain extent works and
allows at least limited access to and manip-
ulation of data.
The challenge is often that multiple
applications are needed to access different
18 digital energy journal - April/May 2007
production and land management, which
have been spliced together in ways which
do not always work very well.
This leads to reduced productivity, mis-
communication, limited access to data,
restricted choices, restricted scaleability of
the system, and difficulty complying with
regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley.
A recent new client was EnerVest
Management Partners, a Houston company Rick Slack, CEO,
which operates Bolo Systems
11,000 wells across
the US. “Many oil and gas companies have put a lot of effort
EnerVest is continu- into integrating their geophysical and geological
ously purchasing systems, and are now moving their focus onto
new wells, and
wanted an integrating their accounting systems”, Rick Slack says.
accounting system
which would make
it easy to add new wells
to the system and pro-
vide a range of different
reports.
Bolo Systems was
founded in 1992 by oil
and gas accountants
who were frustrated
with the software they
were using and thought
they could do it better.
The company serves
mainly what could be
considered the 'mid-tier'
oil and gas companies -
not the largest ones or
the smallest ones - with
a large installed cus-
tomer base in the US. Bolo Systems executive dashboard - see how well your company is running
www.bolosystems.com at one glance
data types, and the majority of these appli- better solutions, which, considering the lack
cations do not interact, despite being
designed in many cases by the same vendor.
Processes are built around existing appli-
of standards in data storage, are having to
be created as bespoke solutions on a com-
pany by company basis.
cations and datasets, many of which include Clearly, for now at least, there is no one
“workarounds” to deal with the challenges solution that will suit everyone.
of extracting, transferring and loading data Inherited data stored on paper, on old
from one application to another. tapes and even some digital storage is
All too often we are forced into a linear increasingly difficult to access and manipu-
process and loose the richness in analysis late, and much valuable information is lost
that would occur if we allowed faster feed- as media, now ancient in “Oil Age” terms,
back loops and more iterative processes. degrades.
The lack of “one for all” integration sys- Market leaders in software develop-
tems is a challenge that is increasingly ment, while declaring their openness and
stretching the industry to look at new and transparency, are still currently developing
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 19

Production software
applications that neither solve the issue nor Tracey Dancy of
industry-wide. Paras Consulting
enable even in-house applications to com- Everything from UWI (Unique Well
municate. Identifiers) to flagging reservoir models
Meanwhile the need to access integrat- would have distinct and unique naming
ed data is becoming more urgent every standards, which ultimately could trans-
day. form the exploration and production com-
Many oil companies are creating their munity. A key part of the solution that serv-
own in-house solutions, working with serv- ice companies should seek to provide is to
ice companies on integrated applications help companies implement industry stan-
that attempt to solve at least part of the dards.
problem.
Some are even looking outside of the Service Orientated Architecture
usual industry providers. The model of Service Oriented
People are developing Google-type seek About Paras Consulting
Architecture, a phrase increasingly being
and search type applications, without the heard in exploration and production data
need for adding expensive and time-con- Paras Consulting is a
management circles, changes the philoso-
suming metadata tags. global management
phy of integrated solutions through the use
However, even more recent applications, consultancy providing
of a Service Bus – a concept which appears
designed with metadata capability, strug- hard-hitting perform-
at least for now to overcome many data
gle to search through historical data – in ance improvement
management issues.
particular the capture of discussion solutions to the
As a concept it appears to solve many of
processes that led to decision making upstream oil and gas
the problems outlined here – a central
based on older models in the first place. industry.
“tank” for putting data in, with streamlined
These discussion processes lead on to Paras consultants
applications for accessing a whole variety
another valuable source of data not cur- have a variety of sen-
of datasets. We see SOA as an increasingly
rently being fully exploited is experience. ior-level experience
exciting and sustainable solution, and
Custom built solutions are creating their including E&P strategy
watch the development of these solutions
own problems. formulation, produc-
with great interest.
Energistics, previously known as POSC – tion enhancement,
Without standards, individual companies
the Petroleum Open Standards Consortium exploration perform-
can only look to find the solution that
– feel, as many do, that the only way for- ance, subsurface
works best for them, in many cases a “bet-
ward in building integrated solutions is to process improvement
ter than nothing” but far from perfect
have clearly defined standards, accepted and information / data
answer.
management.

April 2007- digital energy journal

19
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 20
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 21
Digital Energy conference preview
Our preview of the Digital
Energy Conference and
exhibition in Houston
in April 11-12
he Society of Petroleum Engineers
T Digital Energy Conference (no relation
to Digital Energy Journal magazine) will
be held in Houston on April 11-12 at the
George R Brown Convention Centre.
The theme of the conference will be how
digital tools can help the oil and gas industry
as it goes through something of a transition
period with a growth of national oil compa-
nies and countries as primary operators.
The globalization of the industry, and
growth in multiculturalism of the workforce,
creates its own IT challenges.
Meanwhile developments in IT are
expanding the capability of engineering,
geologic and commercial business processes,
with more communication, collaboration and
access to knowledge.
The conference will address making better
use of data to improve decision making; the
changing workforce and new ways of work-
ing; using technology to find hydrocarbons
in increasingly hostile and difficult condi-
tions; and IT security.
There are four luncheons about emerging
trends, covering predictive analytics, produc-
tion monitoring, high performance comput-
ing and the ‘energy renaissance’ (industry
transition).
The program committee is Paul Miller of
Halliburton (chairman); Ron Cramer of Shell
Global Solutions; David Feineman of BP
America; Russell Borgman of ConocoPhillips,
Ekaterina Casey of BHP Billiton, Murthy
Divakaruni of L&T Infotech, Joe Corrales of
ConocoPhillips, Jim Crompton of Chevron,
Michael Donovan of Schlumberger, Philippe
Flichy of
Globalogix, Leah Smith of Pogo Producing
Company, Jeffrey Pferd of Petris Technology,
Amy Price of
Petris Technology, Sherri Rogers of
Halliburton Energy Services Group, and
Michael Strathman of Aspen Technology.
Key speakers include Phiroz
Darukhanavala, Vice President and CTO,
Group Digital Business, BP; Gary Masada, IT
Company President and CIO, Chevron; Don
Paul, Vice President and CTO, Chevron.
Exhibition
Open iT Inc will demonstrate its software
for optimising enterprise IT resources. The
software meters, analyzes and optimises
usage, and gives management an overview
of which IT assets are being used, by whom,
and for how long. www.openit.com
WellEz will demonstrate its online serv-
ice to gather well and rig reporting data.
Data can be entered into forms on the
rig site, and then submitted to the shore
server. You do not need to have an always
on internet connection to submit the data.
The data is held in a central server and
SQL database, which is managed by WellEz.
Users can draw reports, charts, graphs,
plots and tables, by bringing the data into
Microsoft Excel.
WellEz can incorporate a client's own
drilling report format into the system, and
clients can also access over 20 generic
reports.
The company promises to provide oper-
ations reporting as a service, rather than a
product. The system was recently rewritten
to run on Microsoft.NET platform.
www.wellez.com
NuTech Solutions will exhibit its soft-
ware tools for upstream predictive analytics
and intelligent decision support.
The software can been used to optimise
drilling programs, automate model history
matching, to predictive analytics on well
completions, optimise capital porfolios,
schedule production, optimise enhanced
recovery, plan workovers, and forecast
drilling and completions activity.
The company is a bronze sponsor of this
year’s event, and will be providing pens and
notepads and participating in the predic-
tive analytics panel.
www.nutechsolutions.com
Intervera Data Solutions will exhibit its
DataVera software tools to help manage
data and ensure it is complete. Its software
contains thousands of re-usable rules and
solutions that can be used to clean up data,
including preliminary data profiling, auto-
matic cleansing and correcting, to large
scale data consolidation, and real time data
quality monitoring. It will have live demon-
strations on its booth.
The company, together with Volant
Solutions, will demonstrate a new way of
Production software
managing data quality as it moves between
critical master and project data sets, an
approach the company calls
‘Integration+Quality architecture’.
Intervera will also co-present a white
paper “learning to trust your data – real
time quality integration for E&P profession-
als.” www.intervera.com
SWORD will exhibit its C2Share online
document control system for the oil and
gas industry, designed for complex proj-
ects. The software has special functionality
designed to control the complex informa-
tion flows typically found in a project envi-
ronment.
The software enables a Project
Document Controller to control the flow of
documents between contractors and inter-
nal staff, to monitor documents review,
approval and sign-off process. The Project
Manager can immediately see the status of
project documentation and spot bottle-
necks / risk areas.
Information can be accessed from all of
the different sites by authorized users, so
there is only one version of each document
in circulation. www.sword-group.com
p2 Energy Solutions will exhibit its
Allocation Process Modeling (APM) applica-
tion, for oil and gas companies to accurate-
ly allocate product to the appropriate par-
ties. The system uses recent improvements
in measurement technology and informa-
tion management to enable the allocations
to be more rigorous and faster than in the
past. An unlimited number of components
can be tracked in mass, volume or energy
using any desired engineering unit.
The tool can integrate with steady state
modelling tools, which can work out how
different product streams interact, some-
thing particularly important for sub-sea
tiebacks when production from different
fields can mix together.
The software provides data good
enough to be used in Sarbanes-Oxley com-
pliance and other regulatory procedures.
The company observes that its cus-
tomers have seen a reduction in 'priod peri-
od adjustments' because they got the data
right first time; they also used the data to
increase operational efficiency.
www.p2es.com
April 2007- digital energy journal
21
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 22
IQPC Exchange
Evolutions in data management -
IQPC report
Digital Energy Journal went to IQPC's oil and gas knowledge management conference in London, Feb
27-28, to find out the latest industry developments and thinking in the best way to do it
Data management, data management. There are many people in oil companies
around the world constantly screaming at their screens because they cannot get the
data they want, or worse, spending a high proportion of their time looking for data or
moving it from one application to another, and not knowing that it could be all done
automatically.
he problem, says Lars Olav Grovik,
T petroleum technical data depart-
ment head with Norsk Hydro,
nearly always comes down to
availability of resources (ie means man
hours) and management focus. There are
always other priorities.
And just like the contents of your house,
data does not organise itself.
Getting data organised properly needs
the combination of carrot and the stick.
The stick is the board of the company
who can see how much money the compa-
ny can save, opportunities it can create, and
accidents it can potentially prevent by hav-
ing better data management, and can
make sure it provides the resources and
enforces the discipline to get it done.
The carrot is having good data manage-
ment personnel, who will explain to people
the benefits of data management so they
don't feel they are asked to endlessly fill
out pointless forms (as many people use).
These people can put together systems
which work well and everybody under-
stands the purpose of. They can get every-
body involved.
The biggest obstacle is often not the
senior management (who are being gradu-
ally convinced of the importance of good
data management), but the next layer of
managers, who are in charge of running
projects, who have to fit data management
in with many other priorities.
And data management does not scream
at anybody as a project which needs doing,
because after all people are generally man-
aging with the systems they have.
Using data in a disciplined way is not a
very creative process, in fact very much the
opposite, its about following rules.
However creating data systems can be
creative, and involves an enormous array of
different skills.
And when everything works well, people
can immediately access the data they want,
correct, complete and formatted properly,
in the words of Pearson Harper's director
Steve Pearson, "people's lives become so
simple."
When trying to get projects implement-
ed, there are always many arguments you
can make for good information manage-
ment, but perhaps you have to wait until
the senior managers reach the decision by
themselves that data management should
22 digital energy journal - April 2007
become a high company priority.
One tip, also from Steve Pearson of
Pearson Harper, is that when making the
case for a data management project, its
best to focus on trying to cover the invest-
ment costs, rather than focussing on the
very large amount that can be saved over
the life of the project by shaving a small
per cent off the total cost.
Doing a project to tidy up, organise and
streamline a company's data can be a
rewarding and positive experience (just like
tidying up your house).
But its just hard work at the end of the
day - Ian Hendry, maintenance perform-
ance analyst with BP, said that keeping data
at a sustained high quality after you have
sorted it out, can be much harder than
cleaning it up.
Paul Cleverley
Paul Cleverley, information management
consultant, Flare
Paul Cleverley, information management
consultant, Flare, talked about the system
his company has developed for a major oil
company, to help it to index its information
globally.
Further information about the EP
Catalog is in the Feb / March edition of
Digital Energy Journal.
The system allows users to see at a
glance all the company data and docu-
ments which might help them, rather than
have to look in several different data stores
and databases as they have done in the
past.
The idea is that E&P professionals do not
have to concern themselves with the struc-
ture of the system, just use it to access the
company data and manage their team
information.
Uniquely, the system allows users to say
what level of 'seriousness' or 'officialness' a
document is at - for example, if it is the final
version of a document to be used for deci-
sion making and archives, or a working
document.
When users feel that a document is
ready to share with the rest of the compa-
ny, they can 'publish' it by putting an index
to the document in the catalogue.
Flare found that, once users came to
trust the system, they enjoyed this process
of publishing documents and making them
available to the company.
Risks companies face from not manag-
ing their information properly include not
using information which you had available
and might have helped; wasting time look-
ing for information; and poor handover of
information, he said.
By having good information indexing, a
company can for example discover that it
has useful information in its archives from
when it was drilling in the same region 50
years ago.
Different search systems
Flare is trying to develop a system which
will tackle all of the different types of infor-
mation an oil company needs to manage,
ranging from intranets / discussions / wikis,
to static documents and models, to raw
data.
For intranets, discussions and wikis, a
Google-style text based searching mecha-
nism may be most appropriate for helping
people find what they want.
For static documents and models, a text
based search is useful, but the documents
can also be indexed: for example, so you
can find a specific document about a spe-
cific well which was used by a geologist to
make a certain decision.
Mr Cleverley said it was scary how much
many oil and gas people have got used to
using Google to find out if there is any
information available about a particular
field, rather than searching for the informa-
tion in a structured fashion.
The difference between finding docu-
ments through indexing and through
search is perhaps best understood by those
who remember Yahoo in the early internet
days. It tried to structure the internet so
you could find the documents by drilling
down through categories, rather than
searching for words.
"Full text searches like FAST, Yahoo,
Autonomy, Verity and Google are fantastic
for mining all words in documents,
cont. page 25
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 23

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dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 25
however you just need to ask technical pro-
fessionals in oil companies that have
deployed full text search engines across
their enterprise, "can users find the docu-
ments they want? The answer is no," he
said.
"You need capability for high precision
searches, using E&P keywords and relation-
ships to see the wood for the trees," he
says.
But its not a question of one or the
other, you need both. "People get involved
in pointless debates, is it A (Full Text) versus
B (Structured High Precision), and of course
the answer is A and B," he says.
You need both approaches to answer all
the business questions people want to ask.
Even today, sometimes drilling cate-
gories is a better way to find what you
want than using search words, particularly
when you are looking for something which
is not particularly distinctive words.
It can be useful to be able to search
static documents geographically, for exam-
ple, if a user wanted to find well logs for all
wells in a certain region. One study found
that 82 per cent of documents have a geo-
graphical component to them (eg mention-
ing a certain region).
Flare is experimenting with other ways
to 'map' documents. For example, you
could draw a map showing the documents
which relate to specific geological time
periods, or, on much shorter time scales,
which relate to specific periods in a well's
development history.
The index can be configured so that dif-
ferent people can access the same docu-
ments in a different way. For example, peo-
ple working on a project can make all their
working documents look as though they
are sitting in the same folder, whilst other
people in the company can see the same
documents organised in a completely dif-
ferent way, for example if they want to see
all the well logs for a specific rock type
globally.
Another development is making pattern
recognition, for users who regularly search
for specific documents for particular wells
(eg a well log and a seismic model). The sys-
tem can remember the patterns and
prompt the user so next time it can bring
up all the right documents in a few clicks.
The software can be designed to auto-
matically launch documents (so for exam-
ple if you click on a reservoir model you
can launch the software which can view
the model); it can also automatically launch
a satellite photo showing the region in
question.
The index is being extended to include
external documents, which the company
may not even own. It can show that if the
users want to retrieve that specific docu-
ment, they have to pay a fee to the outside
company for it.
This system can be helpful though in
making sure the company gets most value
from information it has bought from exter-
nal providers with a license to share com-
pany-wide, because other people can see
what the company has bought.
For raw data, a different approach is nec-
essary. Users want to be able to access the
data in streams as 'web services', and layer
different data streams on top of each other
in complex ways.
To do this needs above all very strict
company data standards, so everything
works together.
Steve Pearson, Pearson-Harper
Steve Pearson, managing director of
Pearson-Harper, said his company was in
the business of 'content engineering', or in
other words, structuring, validating and
Steve Pearson, managing director of
Pearson-Harper
maintaining engineering information.
The company has been involved in data
management for many multibillion dollar
projects, including a £13bn project in
Azerbaijan and a £4bn project in the North
Sea. "These are big projects. You have to get
the content right," he said.
Mr Pearson was previously a senior engi-
neer at BP, specialising in instrumentation /
control and IT issues.
He promised a 'practical and pragmatic'
approach to information management,
focusing firmly on the data itself, not the
systems.
There is no point in having sophisticat-
ed approaches to managing information, if
the information itself is not accurate, he
pointed out - it's just a "more elegant way
of getting to our garbage."
Mr Pearson said he thought much of
the common cost and time overruns of
major projects (with 40 per cent of over
$1bn projects having cost and cycle over-
runs of above 10 per cent) could be attrib-
uted to poor information management.
The better the information management
is, the easier it is for people to access the
right data. "And as soon as information
starts to appear, people's jobs become easi-
er. I'm sure we all know this," he said.
According to research by the Institute of
Configuration Management, if the data is
only 95 per cent complete, people work at
just 60 per cent efficiency, he said.
It is common for people to spend 40 per
cent of their time trying to overcome defi-
ciencies of information, he said. "We don't
know any different.
We allow it in our time and budget."
A company can only get away with this
level of wastage if its competitors are just
as bad, he said.
There are strong safety implications to
IQPC Exchange
good information management; good
information management can help a great
deal to manage risks, because people
know much more about what they are
doing; conversely there is a lot of physical
data associated with poor information
management.
Mr Pearson said it used to be engineers
that were driving data management proj-
ects, but now the company is being invited
to address board directors, who want to
understand why they have had accidents,
due to poor data management.
As an example of poor information
management, Mr Pearson said he had
heard of one company offering services to
oil companies doing hazardous equipment
inspections.
To do the inspection, the company
would draw a map of a plant and divide it
up into grid squares, and log all the equip-
ment in each square. They could only
count up to 30 pieces of equipment in
each square, because that was the maxi-
mum amount of information their hand-
held data recorders could take.
Meanwhile, they missed a lot of oppor-
tunities for streamlining the data, because
the company often had the same piece of
equipment several times on the plant. By
looking at the plant as a system instead of
small squares, they could have logged
where the same equipment was installed
more than once, making the data manage-
ment much simpler.
In one project, there were 3,000 haz-
ardous certificates in the system, but the
company only needed 300 because there
were only 300 different pieces of equip-
ment.
Similarly, by cleaning up component
tag numbers, oil companies can find they
have a much lower number of different
spare parts to manage, which can lead to a
lot of savings in spare parts organisation.
One common problem is that people
get so absorbed in their diagrams they for-
get what they are for.
For example, the objective of a piping
and instrumentation diagram is to help
stop a pressure system from blowing up.
If you take this objective further logical-
ly, you might design a system which would
automatically e-mail the person in charge
of the pressure system, if someone else
makes an adjustment to a valve which
could lead to the system not being safe.
But because of poor data systems (eg -
who is responsible for the pressure system
and how do you reach him?) nobody does
things like this.
Another benefit of good information
management is that a company knows
exactly how many of each part it has
bought, and which suppliers it can poten-
tially get a better deal out of.
As an example, one client thought they
had bought 4,000 actuators from a certain
supplier, and the supplier thought they
had sold the company 400.
Pearson Harper found out that the
client had actually bought 8,000 actuators,
but did not know, because they had all
been purchased by intermediary contrac-
April 2007 - digital energy journal 25
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 26
IQPC Exchange
tors.
Now the supplier knows that one client
bought 8,000 of their actuators, it is aware
of how important that client is.
Mr Pearson talked about how the CEO
of a major oil company once said that the
company should design one, build many,
for major projects (such as an FPSO).
An alternative route would be to just
design one information set, which you
could then use over and over again, he said,
even if the projects were all different.
Putting good data management
processes in place means that it is much
easier to get the data you need, he said.
For example, one oil company was find-
ing it had only half of the information it
needed about its topside rig equipment 18
months after the first oil flow. By changing
its processes, it had 98.9 per cent of the
data it needed,
12 months before the first oil.
The cost savings are enormous. One
client estimated that it had saved £180m in
operating expenditure and £60m in capital
expenditure over the life of a field on a
£7bn project, through having better data
management procedures, he said.
However Mr Pearson cautioned that
making arguments like this is often not the
best way to get data management projects
approved.
You are better off trying to demonstrate
how the money expended on the data
management project can be recouped, he
said.
Companies often say they don't have
time and money to do a data management
project, but they always find the time and
money they need to put things right later
when everything goes wrong.
On one project, Pearson Harper was try-
ing to persuade a client for four years to let
them sort out the data management. The
client refused, but eventually asked Pearson
Harper to come in and fix the problems
which had arisen from its poor data man-
agement practises.
Many companies have a standard mind-
set of trying to firefight, because this is
what they spend so much time doing, so
they do not have a process of working out
ways they could potentially save having
problems in the future.
One way companies can get their ven-
dors to improve data management is by
putting it in the contract. If you state that
they should use templates and data man-
agement tools, it forces them to make their
whole operation properly data enabled.
"Get it in the beginning," he said.
Pearson Harper has set up an online
database of equipment related information
and spare parts, called PHusion. Companies
can subscribe to this vast library which has
been collected and maintained over
Pearson-Harper's 15 year history.
Ian Hendry, BP
Ian Hendry, maintenance performance ana-
lyst with BP Exploration, talked about the
importance of having good data to be able
to optimise maintenance, and the chal-
26 digital energy journal - April 2007
lenges of getting good data.
Mr Hendry's role at BP is to work out if
its equipment maintenance processes are
optimised, looking at its facilities in the UK
Ian Hendry, maintenance performance
analyst with BP Exploration
and the North Sea.
Optimising maintenance involves opti-
mising maintenance task planning and
scheduling, analysing the reliability of dif-
ferent pieces of equipment, managing any
maintenance task backlogs, benchmarking
processes, and optimising the utilisation of
manpower.
"My job as a maintenance performance
analyst is entirely dependent on good data
in the system," he said. "I'm very reliant on
data."
BP's asset care (maintenance) system is
enormous. It has around 1 million main-
tainable items in its database, about 4,500
users, and 1.8 million man hours of activity
are recorded in the system annually (equiv-
alent to 1,000 full time employees).
"The asset care system is the engine that
drives our business and the fuel is the
data," he said.
3 years ago, the company embarked on
a project to move all its maintenance sys-
tems into one asset care system. It uses
IBM's Maximo software.
Now the company wants to move its
focus now on the underlying data, rather
than the software tools.
"We've got a lot of education to do," he
said.
The UK asset team is trying to work clos-
er with other areas of BP, to discuss and
share best practises. "As well as identify
what is needed, we have to identify what
isn't needed," he said.
In the project phase, when a facility is
being built, it is important to specify that
the data must be to a certain standard; and
no matter what you do, there is always a
certain loss in data quality moving to the
operations phase, he said. For example,
sometimes equipment is modified, but the
associated maintenance requirements are
not.
Sustaining high data standards can
prove more difficult than getting data to a
high standard, he said. "Data quality does
not happen by itself - that to me is what we
need to focus on."
One challenge is determining who is
responsible for the quality of different bits
of data. Another one is convincing people
how important it is to maintain the data.
Many people are used to spending time
filling in forms, and imagine that the data is
never used. He suggests more effort is
needed to educate people on why data is
important and how it will be utilised to
continually improve performance moving
forward.
Data does not necessarily have to be
perfect, he said. "I used to think, there's no
point in using poor data. But if you wait for
data to be correct you will never start."
Thore Langeland, OLF
Thore Langeland, manager of integrated
operations with The Norwegian Oil Industry
Association (OLF), talked about some of the
projects going on in Norway. The
Association has 28 oil company members
and 53 service company members, and the
Norwegian government is also involved.
The advantage of integrated operations
is "safer, faster and better decisions," he
said, ultimately helping you reduce costs /
increase profit, increase safety and increase
recovery.
"We get real time data onshore and inte-
grate this data, and it leads to technical and
Thore Langeland, manager of integrat-
ed operations with The Norwegian Oil
Industry Association (OLF)
organisational consequences," he said.
Mr Langeland personally spearheaded
many of the integrated operations efforts
in Norway. He initiated the building of
LicenseWeb in 1999, an online tool to man-
age information about oil and gas licenses,
and organised the first seminar in
Stavanger in April 2000 about e-operations.
The Association calculated that the
value of integrated operations in Norway,
using methods it knew would work, was
NOK 250 bn ($40.6bn).
You could say that the first generation of
integrated operations is setting up onshore
support centres, he said, where one compa-
ny monitors its own operations.
The second generation is where several
companies get involved. By 2015, vendors
will remotely supporting their own equip-
ment, he believes.
Mr Langeland was sceptical about the
idea that people's conservatism would be a
barrier to integrated operations. "There is
no creature more flexible than the human
being," he said.
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 27
The Association held a workshop in
2006 about the relationship between inte-
grated operations and safety, with 7
unions, oil companies and service compa-
nies participating.
"They recommenced health, safety and
environment (HSE) has to be a driver for
integrating operations," he said. "You
should have to set goals for HSE when
implementing integrated operations."
However Mr Langeland said there was
not necessarily any benefit to trying to
standardise how different companies
approach integrated operations in the
North Sea. "We need common data stan-
dards, not a common approach," he said.
Mr Langeland described how he saw
different oil companies' approach to infor-
mation management.
"BP - I see - is really a top down process.
They have a very wide view all the way
down," he said.
"Conoco Philips is more bottom up -
they look at the technology and what is
available and move up."
"Hydro - they run a very formal process -
test out a pilot - see if it functions in one
field, then move on."
"Statoil - they are looking into areas
which are technically mature. For example,
they defined condition monitoring on
rotating equipment as mature. They
described condition monitoring on static
equipment as not mature."
"Four companies, four different
approaches, and I think they are all doing
well."
The Association is trying to promote the
idea of all companies using an ontology
(which maps the relationships between dif-
ferent data) based on the ISO 15926 stan-
dard. It is building up a database of how
different data types relate to each other.
Oil industry standards body Energistics
is also working on the project.
It will develop different data schemes
for health and safety, seismic, drilling and
well, development projects, reservoir, pro-
duction, transport, operation / mainte-
nance, and logistics.
Meanwhile the Association has tried to
encourage the operators of fibre optic
cables to consolidate, or at least talk to
each other, so the whole network would
work in a co-ordinated way. Now the three
fibre operators meet each other a few
times a year.
The Association has set up an informa-
tion security group.
It is running WiMax trials, with one start-
ing on the Valhall rig from February 2007
to December 2007. "We will work how to
share Wimax on the Norwegian continental
shelf if it is successful," he said.
It has a project working out how today's
rigs could be adapted to better support
integrated operations, what communica-
tions facilities, equipment and working
areas are required. "We have a workgroup
looking at fundamental requirements," he
said.
Norway was recognised by US consul-
tancy Cambridge Energy Research
Associates as a "leader in harnessing IT to
enhance production practises," he said.
James Kochan, Vitesse Solutions
James Kochan, managing director of US oil
and gas knowledge management consul-
tancy Vitesse Solutions, talked about his
efforts to help companies exchange more
knowledge.
You need to look at knowledge manage-
ment projects as a flow of knowledge
going in many directions, called a many-to-
many collaboration, instead existing one-
to-one flows where the knowledge is only
James Kochan, managing director
of Vitesse Solutions
shared between those two, he said.
Another typical problem is that while
departments or local operations are often
good at sharing knowledge within them,
there is often little sharing with other
departments or geographic locations with-
in the company; people do not see the
need to share information with other
departments or locations and maybe even
feel in competition with them, he
explained.
The solution is to develop and nurture
communities that share globally from dif-
ferent locations and departments.
While networking is by its nature infor-
mal, it is important that people feel that it
is something they should do as part of
their day job. "If collaborating in a network
doesn't help people in their day jobs, it's an
evening club, and has to compete with
other things people do in the evening," he
said.
Many companies have tried knowledge
management but threw away their work
afterwords because they were unhappy
with the small amount of progress.
Mr Kochan advocated using even the
failed projects as a basis for the next one.
"Success happens incrementally," he said.
Companies and employees will often
come up with excuses not to get involved
in knowledge management activities,
'we're different, we can't do that here'. Mr
Kochan stressed it is important not to
accept that excuse, since most cultures in a
free society are the same in many basic
ways. Unless they are in North Korea or
Cuba, some type of sharing can always be
accomplished.
One problem is that consultants are
brought in, and think they are expected to
IQPC Exchange
come up with grand solutions in a short
period of time, which end up being too
ambitious.
"People say, we had so much energy, we
worked so hard, why did it go wrong?"
"When you push a working culture too
hard, like pushing your 13 year old child, at
some point the people turn off to you, you
lose credibility," he said. "Take only what
the culture will give you."
Most importantly people need to be
convinced. "When people say they don't
have time to collaborate, they really mean,
they don't see the value in it," he said.
You can't simply order your staff to col-
laborate, it is too vague. "Saying we want
you to collaborate is like saying we want
world peace," he said. "People need a
process".
Some companies try to enduce staff to
work together more, by promising small
gifts, like T-shirts and caps, but they miss
the point of what staff are really motivated
by.
"I'm half and half on T-Shirts and caps,"
he said. "Those things are nice. But people
more like recognition and accomplishment,
the feeling of going home and having
done something. People operate for
rewards and recognition from their work
and home."
"People feel really good if someone
comes to them with a serious issue and
they help them out."
Vitesse sees information technology as
only one of about ten critical factors you
have to get right for knowledge manage-
ment to work, not something the whole
project is about.
IT can even be a barrier, if people cannot
download the information they want, or
have to keep signing in to get to the infor-
mation. "IT is a garnishment on the plate - it
is a very important one - but the process
here is king," he said.
Liv Maeland, Statoil
Liv Maeland, senior advisor for exploration
and production data management with
Statoil, said that she thought good data
management should be strict. "You have to
get people to handle data in a homoge-
nous manner," she said. "There is no room
for individual creativity"
"Some geophysical / geological users
find it hard to switch between the creative
geophysical and geological environment
and our straitjacketed data management
environment. Most geoscientists find data
management tedious."
Ms Maeland is responsible for Statoil's
subsurface data management network.
"I believe I have Statoil's top manage-
ment support," she said. "Statoil views data
management as an enabler to increased
efficiency in the decision process and an
enabler for improved quality in the deci-
sion basis."
"The challenge is the next layer of man-
agement. They have many important activi-
ties and data management is often the
lowest priority," she said.
"We believe establishing a data manage-
April 2007 - digital energy journal 27
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46
IQPC Exchange
ment organisation - stating who is respon-
sible for what is extremely important," she
said.
"Another important thing is to establish
a corporate data store strategy. Where are
we going to store, what and when."
The company has set up one specific
data store for every data type used in the
company and it has 50 data standards in
daily use.
Liv Maeland, senior advisor for exploration
and production data management with
Statoil
Vendors can take a share of the blame for
poor data management she said.
"Historically, our vendors have been very
poor at delivering data management
tools."
Statoil states in its company technical
rules that each asset is responsible for
making sure that its data is secure, com-
plete, valid, and unique.
The company has a collaboration sys-
tem and knowledge portal called
EarthWeb. "All our best practises are on it,"
she said. "We monitor the time people
spend on data finding, accessing, manipu-
lating, interpreting, documenting and
archiving their information."
Ideally new geological and geophysical
employees should not be allowed to use
the IT system unless they have been
trained in data management, she said.
"Training is a never ending project.
Offering training is one thing, getting it is
another thing."
It is also important to have competent,
motivated and available support staff. "You
need to ensure your data management
staff have status in the company - title and
salary," she said. "Rotate data management
staff from assets into IT. Have a training
program for support staff."
Jerry Hubbard, Energistics
Jerry Hubbard, executive vice president of
Energistics (formerly POSC) talked about
Energistics' renewed efforts to make sure it
is creating standards which people can use,
and are using.
"Standards on the shelf have no busi-
ness value," he said. "Standards which are
deployed have business value."
"Not a lot of time is spent on deploy-
ment of standards. We need to start talking
about that. We need to build a business
case for the standards," he said.
28 digital energy journal - April 2007
Page 28
Jerry Hubbard, Energistics,
executive vice president
It wants to spend more time communicat-
ing to the industry about the standards.
"We need to get our communication syn-
chronised, get our members to take the
message out," he said. Energistics aims to
foster a neutral and collaborative approach
to developing standards, where the partici-
pating companies share the development
risk. Energistics currently has 5 staff mem-
bers, and 68 companies as members. The
membership fee each company pays
varies, depending on the size of the com-
pany.
WITSML
The WITSML standard, developed by
Energistics (under its previous name POSC)
for managing drilling information, is now 6
years old, and is used by 40 companies.
Energistics is now trying to keep the
standard static, to avoid the problem of
more than one different versions
('dialects') in circulation in the industry.
Now Energistics is gathering feedback
on how well it is working.
Statoil has said that the lack of automa-
tion systems was a barrier to a 'full' imple-
mentation of WITSML.
Statoil found that it still had many man-
ual operations to maintain the stream of
real time data from the well, it was not
possible to just leave it running. There was
also manual work needed to handle the
different dialects of WITSML in use, he said.
It also found that WITSML was not prop-
erly supporting automation, and the soft-
ware applications were not properly sup-
porting real time data.
There were some software products not
able to support multiple data streams, he
said.
On the positive said, Statoil found that
WITSML did efficiently transport data to
the Statoil operations centres, and has
been central to getting value from inte-
grated operations.
Meanwhile Hydro, which has used
WITSML since October 2005, said that the
many different dialects of WITSML was a
negative.
A negative was that some of the soft-
ware being used (such as OpenSpirit,
GeoFrame, Bore, Predict and RMS) was not
originally designed for real time data.
On the positive side, Hydro liked having
one central WITSML server in the company,
which could handle the interface to all the
different service companies.
In its internal software, Hydro has restrict-
ed itself to one WITSML dialect.
PRODML
Energistics' next big project is PRODML,
developing a communications standard for
production data.
The standard was developed over the
course of one year.
The PRODML team tried hard to limit the
scope of the standard (what it was going to
do), so that it was achievable and expecta-
tions were managed.
The working group held 2-3 hour confer-
ence calls every two weeks; there was a
steering committee, an operational team, a
content team, and a technical team.
It did not aim for closed loop control
(where instructions are sent from the
remote operations centre back to the well).
3 pilot projects were conducted, looking
at a gas lift well with changing inlet gas;
monitoring free flowing wells; and fieldwide
surveillance.
Mr Hubbard demonstrated how better
control of a well can lead to improved pro-
duction (see graph below).
The graph shows how production rate
changes with time, when you do nothing
(bottom curve), when you fiddle with it
periodically (jagged line), or if you can con-
tinually adjust things (top curve). The area
shaded blue represents the benefit of con-
tinual adjustment of the system over peri-
odic adjustment of the system.
"If the optimisation is automatic you can
get closer to your production potential,"
he said.
Lars Olav Grovik, Hydro
Lars Olav Grovik, petroleum technical data
department head with Hydro, talked about
his project to try to revamp the company's
internal data management systems.
The company began by making a deci-
sion to completely change its software, and
subsequently managed to change 90 per
cent of it.
Then it moved the focus onto the data,
work processes, and people.
It began by trying to find out how good
its data management was. It surveyed two
different business areas, with 320 users in
total surveyed and 231 of them completing
the survey.
When asked how easy it is to get infor-
mation about the quality of data they are
using, 11.7 per cent said difficult; 40.7 per
cent said difficult; 29.9 per cent said neither
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 29
easy nor difficult, 10.8 per cent said easy; 3
per cent said very easy; 3.9 per cent don't
know, he said.
When asked if they can read data from
other disciplines in their main software
tool, 10 per cent said no; 35.5 per cent said
partly - some deficiencies; 45.9 per cent
said yes - the most important data; 8.7 per
cent said yes.
The worst performing software for read-
ing data from other disciplines was Recall
and GeoTrace, he said.
When asked how much time they spend
maintaining data sets on their main soft-
ware tool from other disciplines, 78.3 per
cent said up to 20 per cent of time and 21.7
per cent said between 20 and 40 per cent
of time.
Mr Olav Grovik said he thought they
spent a lot more time than this. "We
realised - people are so used to spending
time moving data that time doesn't count.
It only counts when they have serious
problems," he said.
When asked how easy / difficult is it to
locate petrotechnical data, 29 per cent said
difficult.
When asked "Is your petrotechnical data
stored according to Hydro's routines," 27
per cent didn't know, he said, a result Mr
Olav Grovik found particularly unsettling.
One unexpected problem was in mov-
ing data between Microsoft Excel and
PowerPoint, which is not as good as you
might expect.
"PowerPoint is the most important inter-
pretation tool," he said. "No important deci-
sion is made without PowerPoint. If you
can't get data into PowerPoint you have a
problem."
A typical problem was that PowerPoint
could change the shading on a seismic
model, for example changing a transparent
shading to a solid one, so that a carefully
drawn image would look completely
wrong.
One interesting discovery was that many
people sometimes preferred Google Earth
to the company's more expensive in-house
geographical information system (GIS). "We
will probably implement Google Earth," he
said.
The biggest data management problem
was "nearly always resources (manhours)
and management focus," he said.
Other typical problems are a lack of fast
data retrieval systems, and a lack of uniform
data structures.
Improvement project
Mr Olav Grovik than started a project at
Hydro to improve its data management.
It began by asking ExxonMobil, BP Shell
and Statoil about their data management
organisation.
"We realised they had very different
information management strategies," he
said. "We realised it doesn't matter which
approach we take as long as we do it."
First of all, the company decided to link
together the separate data stores which
each project team had.
It appointed asset data managers, with
an important and central position in the
company.
"They have to be a person who is wan-
dering around," he said. "We had to have a
way people could get total overview of the
data flow."
A pilot project for the new system was
held in the Barents Sea.
Setting up a new data management sys-
tem while people are using the data is like
"changing the wheels on the car when the
vehicle is running," he said. "There have
been nights when I have not been sleeping
very well."
Mr Olav Grovik said that he recently
spoke to a company which had a system
for tracking equipment by RFID tags, but
he could not understand their data filing
system.
Then someone who had worked with
the company's employees several years
before on a different project said that they
had designed their data filing system
around the 31 tags that they used on
paper dividers. "They were following their
old mindset," he said.
Rompetrol
Felix Enescu, chief information officer of
Rompetrol
Felix Enescu, chief information officer of
Romanian oil and gas company Rompetrol,
says he often falls that everything is chang-
ing around him all the time. "
"I personally feel like this," he said. "We
have to build IT which can adapt to this
pressure."
Rompetrol has recently expanded inter-
nationally a great deal, from a 'small
Romanian company to a small multination-
al," he said, which created many challenges
with its IT.
The company analysed its attitude to IT
and decided that it was a 'late adopter' of
technology, something it is keen to
change.
Most of the company's business opera-
tions are in refining, it does not have a
great deal of exploration and production
work, which means it does not necessarily
need the latest technology.
Flemming Rolle
Flemming Rolle, manager of information
and application systems with Dong, chair-
IQPC Exchange
ing the conference, said his company has
IT designed more for transaction systems,
which needs to be very reliable; this is why
the company could consider itself a late
follower with IT.
However the company needs to adopt
a different attitude in its exploration and
production, where it is important to have
the latest technology.
"In exploration, the practitioners see
themselves as artists making risky deci-
sions. In production, it's essential all the
information is properly tagged etc,"
he said.
Stefano Ventura, ENI
Stephano Ventura, Data & Corporate
Database Project with manager, ENI E&P
Division
Stephano Ventura, Data & Corporate
Database Project with manager, ENI E&P
Division, said that the company has a proj-
ect to try to rationalise its data capture
processes, so it could get the data in the
right format for regulators. It is also trying
to manage the data flows, so data is only
entered once.
"Getting the data in the right format is
a big challenge," he said. "A project like
this is long and painful. You have to man-
age inter-department conflicts. People are
the criticalities."
The company started the project in
2000, with a team of 6 people, who weren't
dedicated full time to the project.
ENI staff have been brought to its office
in Milan for training.
Mr Ventura said he comes from the
'technical' side of the company.
When asked how he calculates how
much value the project is adding, Mr
Ventura said he checks how the system is
being used.
IQPC are also running
Future Fields (London)
and The Oil and Gas Exchange
(Houston) this year -
for further information see
www.iqpc.com or e-mail
Elizabeth McAleer on
Elizabeth.McAleer@iqpc.co.uk
April 2007 - digital energy journal 29
dej apr-may.qxp 26/03/2007 20:46 Page 30

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