Today, oil and gas data can be as valuable as the hydrocarbon assets they characterize. Access to relevant data greatly enhances an asset team’s ability to assess economic potential, plan development, and accurately monitor reservoir performance. Individual datasets—seismic, petrophysical, simulations, cuttings, well logs, production—describe the evolving reservoir conditions. These data are the domains of a wide range of petroleum professionals who know their physical or logical locations (desktop, server, cloud) of these datasets and understand their significance.
When Loss of Access Equals Lost Data
The departure or reassignment of a member, change of management team, or sale of hydrocarbon assets can often lead to the loss of access to vital data. The new member, management team, or owner may not have complete knowledge of the data—its origin, location, history, and proper interpretation. Yes, the data exists, but without the ability to access it, the data essentially becomes lost.
Considering the inherent value of oil and gas data, any loss of access diminishes a reservoir management team’s ability to maximize recovery. Teams need a method that ensures access to vital historical and current hydrocarbon asset data.
With a Data Registry, Relevant Information Is Always Accessible
The problem of losing access to data with the change of individuals, teams, or ownership is solved with a data registry—a central index, accessible to all members of an asset team. It allows team members to specify the location(s) of their discipline-specific datasets such as seismic surveys, reservoir simulation models, well plans, mud logs, completion treatments, microseismic, and daily production data.
A data registry is an integral component of CoViz 4D that makes it possible for multi-disciplinary users—geologists, geophysicists, reservoir engineers, drilling engineers, completion engineers, and production engineers—to simultaneously view and interrogate datasets without the need for specific knowledge of where the information is stored. Three examples illustrate how the CoViz 4D data registry helps prevent the loss of access to vital oil and gas data and supports management continuity throughout a reservoir’s lifecycle.
1. Data or Models Not Fully Shared Are Lost Data
Projects suffer when specialists work in isolation. Valuable insights are easily gained by incorporating data and models from other disciplines. CoViz 4D’s data registry makes it easy to share data amongst these various disciplines. This sharing during the entire project life cycle makes best use of the substantial investment in the data. When a specialist incorporates data and models from other disciplines, magic happens.
2. Delays in Finding Data Is a First Cousin of Lost Data
All too often, during surveillance meetings, nearly half of the time is spent looking for data—production data, completion diagrams, well notes, etc. This wasted time amounts to a large lost opportunity cost. Time wasted means other valuable projects are not being completed. With the CoViz 4D data registry, search for and access to this data is measured in seconds.
3. Change of Personnel
When there are abrupt changes of personnel, or sadly, layoffs, individual projects come to an abrupt halt and often it is next to impossible to understand where that vetted data resides. This loss of data, and work progress is expensive for any organization. With the CoViz 4D data registry, the location of vetted data is obvious to the entire asset team.
Additional Advantages of a Data Registry
In addition to making all relevant oil and gas data accessible to individual members of the asset management team, a data registry enhances the value of the data and the quality of analysis through:
- Data quality: where data being accessed by team members have been vetted by the petroleum professional responsible for acquiring, managing, and interpreting it
- Data integrity: where data is accessible by authorized personnel, but cannot be modified, except by the data owner
- Historical data backups: making a copy of the data registry at a particular date to provide a historical snapshot of the characteristics (geological model, well logs, production, etc.) and operating environment
A data registry ensures that all petroleum professionals involved in the evaluation, development, and management are accessing the most relevant and accurate data—historical and current—to inform their decisions.
Prevent the Loss of Vital Oil and Gas Data With CoViz 4D
As new data are acquired or generated and as team membership changes throughout a project’s exploration, development, and production phases, CoViz 4D and its data registry capability ensure that all members of the management team maintain access to vetted critical oil and gas data. CoViz 4D provides the ideal environment for asset management teams to easily access and analyze and visualize it throughout the lifetime of hydrocarbon assets.
Image courtesy of Krunja
