#7 Digital Energy Journal - May 2007

8/9/2019 #7 Digital Energy Journal - May 2007

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Why integrate simulators with real time well data?

Simulators for operations managers

Wi-fi on offshore oil platforms

Maintaining quality subsurface data

BP's Future Fields project - update

May - June 2007 Issue 7

media supporter


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May 2007 Issue 7

Digital Energy Journalis 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 ofDigital Energy Journalis 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 circulationmanager Katerina Jeffery on

[email protected],

Digital Energy Journal,213 Marsh Wall,

London, E14 9FJ.

Alternatively you can subscribe online at

www.digitalenergyjournal.com

Front cover image courtesy Halliburton

Printed in the UK by

THE MAGAZINE PRINTING COMPANY

www.magprint.co.uk

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

www.digitalenergyjournal.com

Tel +44 (0)207 510 4935

Fax +44 (0)207 510 2344

EditorKarl Jeffery

[email protected]

Technical editor/ IT managerKeith Forward

[email protected]

Consultant writerTracey Dancy,Paras Consulting

Production, design and circulationKaterina Jeffery

[email protected]

Advertising salesDavid Jeffries

Only Media Ltd

Tel +44 (0)208 674 9444

[email protected]

Contents

SubsurfaceSimulators and real time informationThere's a lot of talk in the industry about integrating real time well information withsimulators, but not so much about the value which can be achieved from doing it. We askedWellDynamics, a well information company which recently announced a tie-up withsimulator software company Landmark Graphics,what the benefits are.

Good subsurface dataMaintaining good quality subsurface data is a challenge nearly every oil and gas company

is struggling with. Paras Consulting expert Lee Hatfield gives his tips.

No single data management solution - Crouse conferenceOne emerging theme of Philp C Crouse's first ever European conference, heldin Amsterdam, April 19-20, was that there is no single way to fix oilcompanies data and knowledge management challenges.

What lies between wellsIsle of Man company Geodirk has some interesting new methods to improve knowledgeabout rock formations between wells,by combining seismic data with measurements frominside the well, and building up a picture of how the rock formed.

Why well operators should use simulatorsDigital Energy Journal spoke to Landmark technology fellow StanCullick about Landmarks vision for bringing reservoir and wellsimulation right up to the well head,as a tool operations managers canuse, and why they would find simulators helpful.

CommunicationsBT - a new service offering for oil and gasWe all understand what a traditional telecoms company does - but BT is seeking to redefineit.The company has quadrupled its US oil and gas business since 2004.We spoke to head of US oil and gas sales Ross Burley.

Wireless on offshore oil platformsUsing wireless data communications on offshore oil platforms is a much more viableproposition now than it was a few years ago.Stan DeVries, director of upstream solutionswith Invensys,explains why.

SurfaceImplementing a document management systemEMC Documentum recently installed and expanded company-wide content managementsystems at BP, BG, Anadarko, PetroCanada, NordskHydro,and also some of the world'slargest state owned and non state owned oil and gas companies.

Aker and IBM's condition monitoringAker Kvaerner has teamed up with IBM to offer oil and gas equipment conditionmonitoring services. We spoke to Aker Kvaerner's vice president for concept andtechnology,Erik Erdal.

Getting data out of spreadsheetsProduction Access is Houston is on a mission - to persuade independent oiland gas companies to move from spreadsheets to integrated software.

Oracle and data managementAn estimated 90 per cent of oil and gas data is stored in Oracle databases.

Here's how Oracle thinks we should approach data management.

Digital EnergyConferenceHoustonThe SPE Digital EnergyConference in Houston

April 11-12 included asubstantial update onBP's Field of the Futureprogram, updates fromShell's chief scientist for well engineering, and Petrobras' digital oilfield manager.

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From the editor

For readers craving a deeper un-derstanding of the context inwhich our industry operates

(which is probably all of you), I can rec-ommend a recently published book'The Last Oil Shock,' by BBC journalistDavid Strahan.

Mr Strahan has spent the last twoyears trying to find an answer to thequestion, is the world in deep troublebecause the oil is running out?

He hasn't been talking to environ-mentalists, but mainly ex-oil industryexecutives, geologists and engineers,and, when he was able to, current oil in-dustry executives and geologists, to tryto put together his answer.

You have probably already reachedyour own conclusion about when thepoint will arise, if ever, that Western tra-

ditional suburban living will cease to beviable.

But is fairly clear that managing to-morrow's energy supply will be muchmore complex.

We're going to need as good systemsas we can get, to work out where thereservoirs are, work out if they will beprofitable to drill, and optimise the

management of the available resourcesto produce them - capital, expertise andequipment.

We'll also need to weigh up a growingrange of energy sources.

We'll have big challenges educatingthe public, so that their expectationsmatch the deliverables, rather than peo-ple resorting to riots and violence.

The people who can make the bestcontribution here are people with an inti-mate understanding of the oil and gas in-dustry,who will still be alive in 30-40 years,and have a good understanding of datacommunications and information man-agement, have good communicationsskills, have good management skills, andprefer to compete based on their techni-cal competence, rather than their abilityto fight wars.

Sounds like most Digital EnergyJour-nalreaders to me.

So you won't have to worry about everbeing out of a job,or indeed,a fascinatinglife in the future. It will be an exciting jour-ney and Digital EnergyJournalwill joinyou on it.

Even if you have to get to work by boat,bus or bicycle..

Karl Jeffery, editor


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Subsurface software news

iStore's PetroTrek on SharePoint 2007

www.innerlogix.comNewfield Exploration Company of

Houston has selected InnerLogix'sQCPro to manage its upstream dataquality.

The implementation followsa successful trial.

QCPro automates assessing,correcting and exchanging up-stream data. It can work with 65different vendor and propri-etary data sources through a setof plug and play adapters.

"QCPro provides a faster,more efficient process for mak-ing quality data available," saysJim Day,Geoscience Applicationand Data Coordinator of New-field Exploration.

"Our exploration geoscien-tists have already seen improve-ment in both the validity andthe availability of data.

A new version of the soft-ware,3.7,has just been released,which uses parallel processingto improve compute capacityand performance.

The new version has fully in-tegrated tools to automaticallycorrect the data and check va-lidity. It can be used for explo-ration and production data.

There are tools to audit dataand measure how much it has

changed.InnerLogix says that the data

exchange between corporateand project data stores will besmoother.

www.microsoft.com/oilandgasMicrosoft has commissioned a surveyof 100 oil and gas experts worldwide,to find out how much they thinkmore computing power at their deskscan improve their performance.

The survey was conductedby Gelb Consulting Group ofHouston during February 2007.

81 per cent of respondents

said they thought more readyaccess to high performancecomputing capability could in-crease oil and gas production.

61 per cent believe that hav-ing the capability to run addi-

Newfield selectsInnerLogix welldata qualitysoftware

www.gxt.comGX Technology Corporation, a sub-sidiary of seismic systems companyInput Output, has launched Auto-bahn, a seismic data processing sys-tem, to help the company processlarger data sets.

The system can be used toautomate pre-stack quality con-trol workflows.

It should help increase thedata handling capacity of largeprocessing jobs, and reduce thecycle time of seismic data pro-cessing.

For certain processing jobs,the system will be able to deliv-er outputs in 12-24 hours,whichpreviously would have taken 45days.

The first version of the sys-tem is being applied on BP'sWamsutter fractured gas reser-voir in Wyoming, where the da-

ta is full wave and densely sam-pled."Oil and gas companies con-

tinue to demand faster deliveryof higher quality subsurface im-

GXT processes more seismic data fasterages," says Nick Bernitsas,seniorvice president of data process-ing at GXT.

"We needed to develop anextremely powerful data pro-cessing engine that could serveas the foundation for all of GXT'sadvanced imaging techniques."

"As we see streamer countsincrease offshore and stationcounts increase onshore, theamount of data that is beinghandled for each seismic surveycontinues to increase."

The system can sort incom-ing seismic data in many differ-ent ways. For example, the fielddata can be organised into bothcross spread sorts and vectortile sorts, so it is ready for differ-ent noise reduction processes.

The decision making mod-ules contain automated geom-etry quality control and refrac-

tion statics algorithms, to helpstreamline many routine pro-cessing workflows.

GXT believes the system willbe of particular value in marine

Microsoft high performance computing survey

tional tasks and iterations willreduce project risk.

56 percent prefer to sched-ule their own jobs to a techni-cal computing or high perform-ance computing cluster ratherthan refer to a cluster adminis-trator to manage the job queue.

47 percent say their comput-

ing-intensive scientific applica-tions require multiple itera-tions.

The survey also found thattwenty-five percent of comput-ing-intensive scientific applica-

seismic projects, using comput-ing intensive techniques suchas 3D Surface-Related MultipleElimination.

It will also be useful for on-shore seismic processing, wheremany seismic teams still use old('legacy') processing softwarewhich was developed for muchlighter data jobs, with around3,000 channels.

GXT will be using the systemon its seismic program with BPand Apache, together with itsFireFly seismic data gatheringsystem, where it will have10,000 three component (3C)stations, so 30,000 channels al-together.

www.istore.comHouston oil and gas softwarecompany Information Store (iStore)has made its PetroTrek digitaloilfield software available onMicrosoft Office SharePoint Server

2007 and Microsoft Virtual Earth.This is a new system runningon Microsoft .NET.

Running the software onSharepoint Server 2007 and Vir-tual Earth creates more power-ful possibilities to manage thedata, including finding, visualis-ing, controlling and using it, iS-tore says.

It is easier to combine infor-mation from different sourceson the same web page.

The PetroTrek software wasfirst launched in 1997 and cus-tomers include BP, Chevron, PE-MEX and Shell.

"Products like PetroTrek Web

Services and Solutions are im-portant to our operations, andintegral to our Field of the Fu-ture Program," says Steve For-tune, information managementdirector, for BP, Gulf of Mexico.

"By using the latest versionof SharePoint Server, our teamscan easily collaborate to moreeffectively manage our produc-tion assets."

SharePoint Server is a suite ofserver tools, which can help anorganisation manage its con-tent, bringing together its in-tranet, extranet and web appli-cations onto an integrated plat-form.

Virtual Earth is a set of onlinemapping and search services,which enables you to see datatogether with aerial and satel-

lite images.

tions still take from overnight tomore than a week to run.

Microsoft observes that itshould be getting easier forgeoscientists to do high per-formance computing at theirdesks, as processors get cheap-er and faster, and new softwareis developed to help manage

high performance computing,such as its own Compute Clus-ter Server 2003.

Gelb Consulting also ob-serves that it has taken a longtime to persuade geoscience

manages to let go of their UNIXmachines for mission criticalapplications, but they are nowstarting to move to PCs.

"Smart-client PCs and appli-cations are reaching a level ofmaturity, reliability and stabilitythat has caused even the skep-tics to trust a move to Microsoft

Windows," says John Elmer,president of Gelb ConsultingGroup.

The full survey results are atMicrosoft's oil and gas website.

www.openspirit.comLynn Babec will focus on product plan-ning and the future extension of ver-

sion 3.0 of the OpenSpirit application.She joins OpenSpirit from

Halliburton Drilling Evaluation& Digital Solutions / Landmarkwhere she held a number ofproduction operations and sys-tems development roles.

During the past seven years,she managed product develop-ment, marketing programs andprofessional services deliveryacross the production and eco-nomics engineering domain,most recently as the ProductionOperations Practice Manager inthe Consulting and Services

group.

Lynn Babec joinsOpenSpirit asvice president

of marketing

Innerlogix software to manageupstream data - in this screenshot, the colour indicates the qualityof the data for that area (sampledata only)



Subsurface

www.i-o.comNorway marine seismic contractorReservoir Exploration Technology hasawarded a $29m contract to seismic

systems specialist Input Output, tobuy its VectorSeis Ocean system,which collects seismic data from thebottom of the ocean.

The system is redeployable(it can be moved somewhereelse after it has been installed)and gathers full wave (multi-component) data.

The system has enhanced di-agnostic capabilities, whichcome with its Gator commandand control software, made byInput Output's subsidiary Con-cept Systems.

Delivery of the system is

Reservoir Exploration Technologyawards $29m seismic contract

scheduled for the fourth quar-ter of 2007.

"Seabed acquisition is prov-

ing to be a valuable and cost-ef-fective solution for explorationand reservoir appraisal in areashaving complex geology orhigh development costs," saysChuck Ledet, senior vice presi-dent of the Marine Imaging Sys-tems Division at Input Output.

"Over the last severalmonths, we have worked inclose partnership with RXT towitness first-hand their field ex-perience with the VSO system."

"As a result, we have identi-fied valuable ways to advanceits performance."

www.acopia.comData storage company Acopia Net-works has signed a deal with CabotOil and Gas to provide its Acopia ARXTfile storage system, with its Free-domFabricT operating system.Cabot will use the system for itsseismic and geophysical map-ping data.

Cabot expects to be able tofree up disk resources and re-duce data storage/backup costswith the system.

Cabot implemented theAcopia system due to problemswith its previous system, whichused small file headers (stubs),which were left behind whenfiles were moved.

Acopia says that a number oftimes, the stubs would get mis-aligned with the wrong data,and Cabot's IT staff would bewasting a lot of time trying tosort it out.

With the new system, Cabotcan identify inactive files beingstored on its NetApp FAS960 fi-bre channel data storage sys-

tem, and move them automati-cally to its less expensive Ne-tApp R200 Serial-ATA (SATA)platform.

Cabot Oil and Gas

uses Acopia filestorage

www.openspirit.comDynamic Graphics of California, whichproduces the EarthVision, WellArchi-tect and CoViz 3D software, has madea deal with OpenSpirit to make itsEarthVision and Coviz software inte-grate with other software applica-tions.

Users will be able to inte-grate their EarthVision andCoViz databases with otherdatabases,such as Halliburton'sOpenWorks and SeisWorks, aswell as open formats like SEG-Yand RESCUE.

The company has taken outa license of OpenSpirit's appli-cation and data integration de-veloper's kit, so it can make useof OpenSpirit to enable users to

Dynamic Graphics uses OpenSpiritdata integration

share its data with software ap-plications made by other com-panies.

CoViz is a software tool toview 2D, 3D and even 4D data.The data can also be interrogat-ed.

EarthVision is a 3D modelbuilding and viewing tool, that

can be used to create and up-date 3D models for well posi-tioning, reservoir characterisa-tion and environmental analy-sis.

OpenSpirit thinks that theidea of interoperable tools,which enable teams to workbetter together across differentsoftware packages, is gaining afoothold in the industry.

www.ihs.comIHS has launched IHS Acquisition

Screener, a new asset screening re-source for oil and gas acquisition anddivestiture (A&D) teams.

Acquisition Screener pro-vides information that helpsidentify potential acquisitiontargets and validates economicassumptions on specific assets.It offers new and unique infor-mation, including: operatorrankings, valuations, activitytrends, operating expenses,ownership and reserves.

Currently, A&D engineersscreening Texas assets onlyhave access to detailed data forproperties that are publicly of-fered for sale.With Acquisition

IHS releases Acquisition Screener and PETRA with Enerdeq

integrationScreener, users can query acomplete set of screening-leveldata to identify assets, or entirecompanies,to approach with anoffer.

Users can also generateranked production lists for fields,operators or leases within a basin.These ranked lists will help usersfind more detailed economic in-formation based on selected at-tributes such as daily production,number of wells,depth and pro-

ducing formation.Regional subscriptions forAcquisition Screener are basedon geological provinces androughly cover North, South,East and West Texas.

The new release of PETRA(version 3.1.9.0), IHS' PC-basedgeological analysis softwarenow includes an IHS EnerdeqDirect Connect feature provid-ing customers an easy mecha-nism for creating and refresh-ing oil and gas companies' in-terpretation projects with thelatest IHS data.

In the past, this often re-quired manual effort or the de-velopment of custom data-

transfer interfaces. Enerdeq Di-rect Connect helps to reducedata access time, and improvesdata currency by retrieving themost recent data available onIHS servers.

KCA Deutag, one of the world'slargest drilling contractors, and theNorth Sea's largest offshore platformdrilling contractor, has extended its

use Well Data Technologies' dailydrilling reporting solutionWellInform.

It is now using WellInform foractivities in 18 different coun-tries, compared to 9 previously.KCA Deutag now plans to addi-tionally roll out WellInform forits operations in Sakhalin, Libyaand Saudi Arabia.

KCA now considers the soft-ware to be a global perform-ance tool, providing the ability

KCA Deutag expands use of Well DataTechnology's reporting system

to report, analyse and measureglobally.

WellInform is a web baseddaily reporting system for

drillers, designed to be easy touse at the well site, where thereis generally restricted data com-munications capacity.

The tool can generate re-ports according to the user's re-quirements, which can be auto-matically e-mailed to peopleneeding them.The system is de-signed to be able to gather da-ta in many different ways, usingwhatever units of measure-ments are being used.

Acopia's ARXTfile storagesystem, beingused by CabotOil and Gas

Drilling contractor KCA is using Well Data Technologies drilling reporting solutionin 18 countries


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Subsurface

With all of the costs associated withdoing business in todays oil indus-try, operators are increasingly fo-

cusing on their decision-making processes such as the quality of data they have, howeffectively they are using it, and how theymight apply it to make better, more accu-rate decisions that squeeze every availabledrop of oil from the reservoir.

Technology is helping with this chal-

lenge, providing an assortment of real-timedata, collaborative computer environmentsthat allow people in many locations to shareinformation, and sophisticated modeling ca-pabilities that rapidly solve complex prob-lems.

The integration of these technologies in-to a real-time, collaborative environmentthat helps operators to make the best, mostaccurate decisions and then act on thosedecisions in time to impact production isthe Digital Asset.

Working within the Digital Asset, opera-tors can monitor, measure, model and ulti-mately optimise an asset.

Among other things, they can use the

time they typically spend on collecting,compiling, organising and distributing datato quickly assess a situation and make anynecessary adjustments.

They can also use real-time data as inputto self-learning predictive models that rap-idly provide results, allow for what if analy-sis, and handle hundreds of constraints in aslittle as a second.

WellDynamics and LandmarkThe integration of real-time data, predictivemodels, and intelligent completion equip-ment is one component of a companys abil-ity to realize the vision of the Digital Asset.WellDynamics, the market leader in intelli-gent completion technology, and Land-

mark, a brand of Halliburton Drilling,Evalua-tion and Digital Solutions,have recently col-laborated to close the loop on well opti-mization using this integration.

SmartWell intelligent completion tech-nology provides downhole control of flowinto or out of a reservoir, remotely and with-out intervention,and offers better manage-ment of recovery mechanisms associatedwith complex reservoirs, secondary recov-ery, and enhanced oil recovery (EOR), pro-viding real-time monitoring, zonal isolation,and subsurface control across extendedreach and multilateral wells. Reservoir man-agers can use the data from the SmartWellequipment to maintain reservoir models

and to determine the optimal positions ofthe flow control devices.The WellSolver application is a real-time,

model-based optimisation application de-signed for individual wells. Using an ad-vanced neural network technology, Well-

Solver creates a very robust data proxymodel of the well. The model solves in lessthan one second, and is capable of runningcomplex optimisation strategies in relativereal time.

Combining real-time data with modelsThe integration of SmartWell data and theWellSolver software allows operators tomonitor, model, predict and optimise wellperformance scenarios using real-time pro-duction data, and to interface with controlsystems to effect closed-loop control of theSmartWell completion. Engineers use thedata as input to the model, run cases in onlyseconds,and then apply the results to movedownhole SmartWell valves to optimize pro-duction from the reservoir.

The integration also supplies valuableenterprise-wide business intelli-gence in a collaborative decision-making environment, where thereservoir management team us-es the data to forecast produc-tion needs and perform more ac-curate planning. This collabora-

tive environment allows them toplan and execute proactive pro-duction and injection optimisa-tion strategies.

The environment also sup-ports the management of com-plex recovery methods, likechemical flooding, miscible re-placement,and thermal recovery.Resolving conflicting objectivesbecomes easier, such as increas-ing net oil production while con-straining water production.

Conventional ApproachTraditionally, reservoir engineers

have relied on the dynamic reser-voir simulation modelas a tool to understandsubsurface conditions.In this situation, theengineer uses datafrom gauges and valvereadings, along withthe reservoir simula-tion model, and makesdecisions about bothindependently.

Some operatorshave tried to integrateSmartWell functionali-ty with reservoir simu-lation models to gainthe freedom and con-trol offered bySmartWell technology;however, the typicalreservoir simulator

Monitoring and modelsThere's a lot of talk in the industry about integrating real time well information with predictive

modeling software, but not so much about the value that can be achieved from doing it.We asked

WellDynamics, a leader in providing intelligent completion technology to the upstream oil industry, and

Landmark, a brand of oil services provider Halliburton Drilling, Evaluation and Digital Services, aboutthe benefits of their goal to bring an integrated solution to the industry.

Written by staff from WellDynamics and Landmark

A typical SmartWell completion. SmartWell monitors provide real-time downholedata to the WellSolver predictive model,which then selects optimal equipmentsettings.

that is currently available lacks the speedand robustness required and cannot effi-ciently optimise the downhole control func-tion (relative to a pre-defined objectivefunction).

As a result, any attempts to quantify thevalue of intelligent wells in a field applica-tion, or to determine the best way to oper-ate intelligent wells on a production or re-serve recovery basis, require frequent, labor-

intensive interface with the reservoir simu-lator over multiple runs. Based on this con-ventional approach, reservoir simulationwith intelligent well capability and well op-timisation occurs intermittently, if at all.

The new approach of closing the loop ef-fectively resolves the problems of the con-ventional approach by successfully integrat-ing SmartWell technology with the Well-Solver predictive modeling software.

Reservoir models - what is the benefit to

supplying them with real time data from the wells?


8/32

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Subsurface

7

Data management has become oneof the most important tasks facingsubsurface teams.

As more and more data is acquired it be-comes more important to manage that da-ta in order to avoid the cost and time issuesassociated with mismanagement of data.

Subsurface managers have a responsibil-ity to the company that they work for and

to the staff that work for them to providequality data in a time effective manner.

Effective data management provides ahost of benefits that can be seen through-out the subsurface team.

Efficiencies will be realised both in termsof time and costs, and additionally produc-tivity will increase, but perhaps the mainreason for good data management is toprovide confidence in the data that is usedfor decision-making.

The three main factors that influenceconfidence of data are consistency, accura-cy and completeness.

It is now common practice for explo-ration and production companies to require

their asset managers and subsurface man-agers to provide auditable reserves figures.This means that the associated data and as-sumptions that go with that data need tobe preserved throughout the sub surfaceinterpretation workflow/lifecycle. In caseslike this it is important to be able to supplythe correct data and content.

Data management frameworkThe data management framework is a wayin which many different aspects of datamanagement can be defined under oneumbrella. It provides a way of working thatis sustainable and self promoting.

One of the most important points tonote is that the data management frame-

work must have continued managementsupport.

A good data management frameworkneeds policies, industry standards, process-es and procedures for the functional datatypes.

The data needs to be accessible, havegood architecture / dataflows, have goodnaming standards, a publishing system, aphysical data management system, a quali-ty management system and good data cap-ture systems.

On the people side, you need a sustain-able system which people have ownershipof. You need roles and responsibilities, or-ganisation and leadership.

Data auditBefore embarking on designing and imple-menting a data management framework itis advisable to undertake a data manage-ment audit to understand what the specific

issues are within the team.

The audit should include database inter-rogation to gain an idea of existing dataquality, as well as 'interviews' with teammembers to identify the main issues andconcerns.

The audit results should drive the itemsto be included in the data managementframework and the priority of implementa-tion.

Data ownershipData ownership ensures that persons are re-sponsible and more importantly account-able for the data that the team uses and pro-duces.

Ownership should be assigned to all da-

ta and those responsible should managethe data by tracking, maintaining and pub-lishing according to defined processes.

The levels of ownership within your teamwill depend on the size and complexity ofyour organisation. You should however,have the following key roles:

Management - usually an asset manageror subsurface manager who is accountablefor all data used and owned by the team

Data owner - technical experts who areresponsible for the specific data in their areaof expertise. These personnel should lookfor consistency, correctness and complete-ness of data as well as advising on publish-ing and flow through the team

Data custodian - responsible for day to

day data management activities and integri-ty activities

Data ownership should not be a difficultor demanding task if the correct standards,processes and procedures are in place.

Maintaining good quality subsurface data is a challenge nearly every oil and gas company is

struggling with. Paras Consulting expert Lee Hatfield gives his tips on how to do it

by Lee Hatfield, senior consultant,

Paras Consulting

Good subsurface data

Data publishingAny unpublished data is usually hiddenaway in databases and filing structures,making it very difficult to find and use.

Data publishing is key to making data ac-cessible to those that rely on it.Data shouldbe published in the most suitable reposito-ry, whether it is an EDMS (Enterprise Docu-ment Management System) for reports or adatabase for some MDT (Modular Forma-tion Dynamics Tester) results. This reposito-ry should always have an owner.

The five main stages to publishing aredocument creation; putting in the content;approval / quality assurance / review; get-ting the final version; and publishing it forthe target audience.

When publishing data the followingrules should be applied:Always add a date stamp to the dataAlways include a data ownerOnly publish relevant dataUse keywords to make searching and re-

trieving easierEnsure that data is published in the most

suitable placeIf possible, ensure that the team are no-

tified of new published data availability.

Data qualityAll exploration and production companiesstrive for perfect data quality and almostnone obtain that goal.

The reasons why are varied but it has to

remain a high priority and something thatthe subsurface manager should be aimingfor. Items to consider include consistencyagainst standards,constant checking for ac-curacy, duplication and incomplete data,and ensuring that all information is up to

How to make sure your subsurface data is always of high quality



Subsurface

date and absolutely unambiguous.In order to ensure compliance and ac-

countability at a later date,it is also vital thatthe audit trail is available, consistent and ofhigh quality.

The important factors in ensuring quali-ty data are:

An awareness of data quality issues inthe team

Identifying critical dataEvaluating all current data problemsAssigning responsibilities and data own-

ershipAgreeing definitions and requirements

for all data typesDefining a process to identify and re-

solve data issuesSeeking expert guidance if necessarySustaining the effort on quality initia-

tives.

Data architecture and connectivitySubsurface managers should consider

whether their team has the correct data ar-chitecture. The data architecture relates to

the way in which data is stored, used andmoved around the system.By defining a dataflow for each data type

showing the main steps in the use, storageand responsibility of the data, the subsur-face manager should be able to see wherethe 'stoppers' or 'bottlenecks' are in theflow, and hence identify required changesin architecture.

Examples may include how differentdatabases and applications are connected,how data flows through them and how tomaintain data from master to working proj-ects.The example below shows part of a po-tential seismic data flow.

Each stage is colour coded to identifyownership and the flow of data through thesystem can be clearly seen. From this flowthe subsurface manager should be able toidentify where efficiencies can be made.

The first stage is that data is acquired orpurchased from a third party,including fieldtapes (in segd or segd formats), navigationdata and other reports.

The data is processed by a processingcontractor and sent on to the operationsteam. It is indexed by the storage contrac-tor.

The field data is indexed by a storagecontractor and sometimes quality con-

trolled.The processed data is passed to a data

loader for loading to applications.After being loaded to the applications,

the data is quality controlled by the opera-tions team,and if it is not good enough, theoriginal data is processed again.

Meanwhile the data in the applicationsis catalogued and sent into storage, andsometimes quality controlled.

Physical data managementPhysical data Management is the manage-ment of all physical media,reports, sectionsand so on.

These materials are usually stored andmanaged by dedicated storage contractorsbut the subsurface team has a role to playin how they are managed and what isstored.

Consider the following:

Does the team have robust proceduresand standards for getting physical data intothe correct storage supplier with the cor-rect metadata?

Do you issue retention dates with the da-ta?

Have you ever investigated the physicaldata held by your team to see if it still hasrelevance to modern working?

When archiving physical media into stor-age you should supply as many details aspossible so that the data is easy to find at alater date.You may want to set up standardtemplates for the data that you send tostore.

You should consider undertaking proj-ects that will increase efficiency and de-crease the amount paid in storage costs.These may include scanning of hardcopy re-ports, tape transcription to new media anddata rationalisations.

Effort must be made to implement andmaintain an index of all the data, with asso-ciated metadata.This index needs to be ac-

cessible by all team members.

Policies, procedures, processes andstandardsPolicies, procedures, processes and stan-dards provide the backbone for data man-agement and ensure that all work done inthe data management domain has a firmfoundation for future development andgrowth.

The subsurface manager should identifygaps in the standards and procedures cur-rently used by the team and should put inplace an action plan to fill these gaps.

Standards would typically include nam-ing conventions for different data types.

Procedures can be written for physicaldata management, document manage-ment and control, most data types and da-ta loading into applications.

Whatever is chosen, the standards andprocedures should complement the way inwhich the team works, but should also pro-vide efficiencies.

They should be published in the publicdomain and should be actively communi-cated to all parties.

Data accessibilityData must be accessibility for it to have val-ue to the team.

This means that the data must be pub-

lished in the correct place (see above) andapplications, databases and disk space usedby the team must be correctly configuredand managed.

Sustainabilityand data management cultureWhilst the subsurface manager investigatesand resolves items defined above, it is im-perative that all the work done is sustain-able, and that the subsurface team devel-ops a data management culture that growsand will actively promote data manage-ment in other parts of the company.

This should be done by involving the

team and if possible making data manage-ment part of staff annual objectives and in-centive schemes.

Once over the initial push of data man-agement activity, the subsurface manager

should find that his/her staff become moreamenable to data management and thebenefits that it brings.

In effect the subsurface manager shouldtry to help the team help themselves.

In order to promote sustainability thesubsurface manager should consider insti-tuting periodic reviews to consider what isand isn't working.

Focal points are vital for teams manag-ing data, and data management tasksshould be given time on a daily basis.

All data management issues should beactively promoted by the subsurface man-ager at all times, in order to sustain consis-tency and team working.

Ultimately, it is imperative that subsur-face managers are seen to be putting time,resources and expenditure into data man-agement. Failure to do so risks the conse-quences of loss of data, inability to prove re-sources and take responsibility for individ-ual datasets.

This in turn potentially leads to lowmorale within a team as they spend largeamounts of time looking for data thatshould be easily accessible, and ultimatelya lack of confidence in both the data andthe decision makers, usually the subsurfacemanagement.

Lee Hatfield,senior consultantof Paras Consulting

About Paras Consulting

Paras is an international consultingcompany, highly regarded for itsability to define and resolve difficultchallenges within the explorationand production world. Independentof any technology,Paras is able to as-sist clients in selecting "best in class"solutions, and develop strategies fortechnology enabled change.

With a wide variety of senior-lev-el experience including informationand data management, investmentdecision making, subsurface andcapital allocation process improve-

ment, Paras consultants delivermeasurable, lasting business valueacross the whole E&P spectrum.



Subsurface

The 11th International Conference onPetroleum Data Integration, Informa-tion and Data Management, organ-

ised by Philip C Crouse and Associates, Inc,was for the first time,held in Europe as wellas in Houston this year, in Amsterdam Mar-riott Hotel on April 19-20, co-sponsored byEnergistics and Shell E&P.

One emerging theme was that there isno quick solution to the challenge of datamanagement,solving all the needs for inte-

grating,accessing and storing the exponen-tially growing mountain of data.Sushma Bhan, information manage-

ment discipline chief, exploration and pro-duction research and development, Shell,set the theme by explaining how Shell's ap-proach has been to have a number of small-er knowledge management efforts, withleadership endorsement and high manage-ment accountability, rather than one mas-ter project.

Mr Bhan explained how the challengeof information management in researchand development is very different to in oth-er parts of the company, because in re-search the emphasis is on wisdom andknowledge, rather than on data and infor-

mation. Research and development peopleare often resistant to change,and dislike thelack of flexibility often found in generic ITtools, he said.

Staff often stay in the same companydoing long term research, and thereforehave vast tacit experience to pass on - notsomething that is easy to do in current datamanagement IT solutions. Investment in re-search and development IT is typically be-low average for the industry.

Dag Heggelund, president and CEO ofautomated data cleaning company Inner-logix suggested that with the challenges ofincreased data volume and a strong de-mand for data resources,people could start

thinking of a company's data system as aninformation factory, requiring the samequality control on input as well as output.

All too often we are in "reactive mode"rather than working more efficiently in"proactive mode, he said.

Good quality management followingDMAIC (define, measure, analyse, improve,control) guidelines will enable a companyto have a decisive competitive advantageover others,he said.

Vidar Andreson,product manager of In-nerlogix, explained how it is vital that rulesare established over data quality, coveringcompleteness, consistency, uniqueness, va-lidity and content.

It is good to have tools which can show

which areas need cleaning up, he said. Dataquality statistics can be made available onthe company intranet - providing a "nameand shame" motivation for users.

This kind of motivation always has a

downside however -how to prevent usersentering "null" resultsto make the metricslook good.

Gerhard Thon-hauser of the Universi-ty of Leoben,in Austria,spoke about data qual-ity control in the con-text of measuring and

managing sensor data.The important stepsare data standardisa-tion (in this case usingWITSML); quality con-trol; quality reporting;data compressionwhere appropriate andgood access / visualisa-tion, he said

If done correctly,any problems can beidentified, flagged andcorrected automatical-ly. This can be done invery close to real time,although applying ex-tra filters for outliers and noise reductioncan increase the access time.

ArchivingLee Hatfield, senior consultant with Paras,talked about data obsolescence and archiv-ing, explaining that archiving should beprocess driven, using core principles,includ-ing standard neutral formats, good data in-dexing using mandatory metadata, andwith dedicated resources.

Discussions over whether archivingneeds to extend to software versions andoperating systems continue, but with digi-tal storage becoming cheaper and lessspace-consuming, this is an argument that

may eventually resolve itself, he said.Data ownership continues to be a big is-sue - it is vital for the efficient running ofarchiving systems to have ownership of thatdata. Assigning ownership implies account-ability and responsibility, which, in line withan overall data management policy, can en-sure that archived data continues to be ac-curate and accessible, he said.

In the conference discussion, it was stat-ed that 98% of legacy data is never re-ac-cessed, according to figures from outsidethe E&P industry. But how do you decidewhich 2% will be accessed? Clearly there isa requirement for at least a basic level of in-dexing,but often it is a question of prioritis-ing which data set to index first.

With company reorganisations andmergers an everyday fact of life in the indus-try, it is all too easy to allow data to becomelost in the system.

Regulatory compliance forms a large

One emerging theme of Philp C Crouse's first ever European conference, was that there is no single way

to fix oil companies data and knowledge management challenges - but enforcing universal rules goesa long way to help

By Tracey Dancy of Paras Consulting, consulting writer to Digital Energy Journal

No single data management solution -Crouse conference

part of the motivation for keeping legacydata, although the length of time requiredvaries greatly, and may require keeping amountain of data in order to access the en-velope of information needed.

StandardsAlexander De Leon with NCR Teradata tooka look at the lessons learned by WalMart inthe US, where all transaction data goes intoa central data warehouse, which can con-tain a number of data types and applica-tions, and is fed out to the decision makersand users, he said.WalMart's system is up-dated by 500 terabytes of data every 5-10minutes. The starting point with this solu-tion - as with all others - is to create stan-dards at least company wide, if not industrywide, he said.

Randy Clark, president and CEO of En-ergistics, gave an overview of the businessvalue of implementing Energistics stan-dards. At a time when "Intelligent Energy" isat the forefront of all E&P business drivers,there has never been a more urgent time tolook seriously at open data exchange stan-dards, he said.

The upstream oil and gas industry be-lieves that increased standardization can re-sult in billions of dollars of additional valuein the area of production optimization,alone, and knows that there are additionalbillions to be saved in other areas of the

business,he said."Standards developed but sitting on thevirtual, or any other, shelf have no businessvalue, and Standards developed in a collab-orative fashion but not widely adopted on-ly have potential business value. However,

Liv Maeland, senior Advisor for exploration and production data management withStatoil, speaking at the PNEC Conference



Subsurface

standards developed in collaboration,wide-ly adopted by the industry and deployed inthe oilfield have tangible business valuethat result in improved rates of return, pro-duction optimisation and operational effi-ciency," he said.

Alan Doniger, chief technology officerof Energistics,spoke about Energistics' proj-ect to develop a global unique well identifi-

er, or GUWI, standard.Energistics is working together with IHSEnergy to ensure that GUWI's are enabledthroughout the industry, he said. IHS Ener-gy will manage an international GUWI data-base, incorporating information about ex-isting wells,and ensuring that all newly reg-istered wells have a unique number, are reg-istered in their database and are madeavailable to the industry when required.

At the same time IHS will continue tomaintain the additional information theyhold about wells, which will, as before, becommercially available to clients who re-quest it,he said.

Trudy Curtis, CEO of the Calgar y basedPublic Petroleum Data Model Association(PPDM), talked about the need for data tobe kept in the long term,not just for the life-time of any asset, as we cannot tell in ad-vance what and when information might bevital.

She emphasised the need for process-es, policies and procedures to be imple-mented, to ensure data use and access isidentified and documented at every stageof the workflow. Integration is hard work -there is no easy solution, but as the datamountain grows, the implementation ofgood solid workflows at ground level willensure that future data is more manage-able, she said.

Pre-stack seismicJanet Hicks, marketing development direc-tor with Halliburton Landmark,talked aboutusing pre-stack seismic data together withprocessed data to improve geophysical in-terpretation.

The market perception of using pre-

stack data has been that it is too big for in-terpretation or too specialist, she said. Butyou could store the entire data for (for ex-ample) The Heidrun Field, including pre-stack data, can be held on a 60Gb iPod, andthe data can also be made available over anetwork.

Much pre-stack data is held on tapewith questionable quality, and needs to be

remastered before it can be used. But withtechnology in this area moving so quickly,this is clearly an area that may provide bet-ter interpretative models in the future.

Social networksDavid Zappa, knowledge managementmarketing manager with Halliburton'sBaroid Fluid Services, spoke about increas-ing knowledge sharing by developing em-ployee social networks.

Based in Caracas, Venezuela, Mr Zappaknows well the problems associated withbeing away from the central knowledgehub of any company.

The concept of structured networkingwithin a company is not a new one - though

the Halliburton answer has been to providethe applications to formalise the sharing ofknowledge and expertise through a de-fined social and professional network.

The advantages are many and disparate,and the ability to use and share knowledgein the network is tied to employee perform-ance - good networking skills are rapidlybecoming a requirement for advancementto management levels.

This presentation did provoke thequestion - if there are incentives to employ-ees to participate, how much of that is tiedto their personal goals rather than thesomewhat altruistic aims of the programmeitself?

In the meantime, it is clearly a way inwhich knowledge, particularly heritageknowledge,can be shared with a wide vari-ety of participants,based on the dominanceof more flexible working tools, as opposedto traditional networking methods.

Taxonomy vs folksonomyAlessandro Allodi, team leader documentsand knowledge management with Petrole-um Development Oman LLC, spoke abouttaxonomies and folksonomies.

Taxonomy is the more traditionalmethod of tagging data - a rigid hierarchi-cal structure based on Dewey Decimal Sys-tem type classifications.

Folksonomy,on the other hand, is basedon an open ended labelling system - whereusers contribute to tagging, using familiar,shared vocabularies. These are alreadywidely used by public websites like Amazonand delicious to great effect.

There are potential downsides to folk-sonomies however - users may not be con-sidering the "common good",and could usetagging to wilfully mislead other users - andthere is clearly the possibility of a "tagswamp" - where tagging the minutiae of da-ta leads to thousands of unwanted hits.

Metacarta

Kay Sutter, energy manager with Metacartapresented her company's way of dealingwith unstructured data, often the type ofdata that is left out of technology solutionsbecause of the complexity involved in in-dexing.

Energy company employees produce -and purchase - millions of documents, andthese are stored in a number of ways -repositories, servers, even personal laptops,she said. Finding and accessing data is fun-damental to business value, but this task istruly the ultimate needle in a haystack.

35-50 per cent of information is notfound by typical search engines, and 30 percent of the time available to knowledgeworkers is used in searching for documentsthat are not found. With 80 per cent of thedata stored by the average oil company un-structured, a solution to this is vital.

Metacarta's solution is to index the doc-uments around the geographical referencepoints mentioned in them. Metacarta's ap-plication can combine structured and un-structured data, using familiar interfaces,that can be called up using geographicalreferencing.

The information does have to becleaned up first - some standardising is vi-tal, and intelligent tagging methods will

have to be employed - many documents inthis industry will have a tag for "Houston"for example, but not be relevant to thatarea.

Kay Sutter,energy manager withMetacarta

The PNEC conference audience



Subsurface

Oil and gas companies are very goodabout learning about the subsurfaceup to about a few metres around a

well,obtained from sensors inside the well (onwireline).The data can be over 90 per cent ac-curate.

The problem arises when people try towork out what is going on between the wells.

Exploration and production managersknow that seismic is useful for mappingshapes and getting some attributes about therock, but it can give very wrong informationwhen used together with well data to map, in-ter-well, geology and petrophysics informa-tion.

The innovative steps in Geodirk's methods

start with means to map how a sediment vol-ume was buried,and whether there were any-thing abnormal in the burial or if it happenednormally.

If you understand that the sediment wasburied normally, then via GeoDirk, you canconvert seismic data more accurately into rel-atively complete geological and petrophysicalmodels,using methods evolved from those pi-oneered 40 years ago.

But if there were anomalies in how the sed-iment was buried,then seismic data cannot beconverted so accurately into geology or petro-

physical models, unless such anomalies arenormalised, via GeoDirk.

Geodirk evolved from the Spiralproject re-search, (some of which was supported byPhilips and ARCO), evaluated by a UK govern-ment Department of Trade and Industry com-mission of Plymouth University, which report-ed it to be the biggest breakthrough in E&Pgeoscience of the 90s.

This was extended whereby now, GeoDirkexpert systems claim world records for bothspeed and accuracy of working seismic intogeology and petrophysics.

GeoDirk believes it can help provide twiceas much risk relevant knowledge for the samecost as other companies,and invites customers

to test this."We would like to invite a National Oil Com-pany,or Hydrocarbon Ministry,to host an eventto assess the performance of seismic interpre-tation workstations available to them," saysKen Armitage of Geodirk.

Geodirk has tested its methods in manyprojects, by comparing seismic,worked minuswell control, resolution about 10m, againstover 100 km of well data, resolution 0.2m.Thisincluded an audit, using PAD (Irish govern-ment) data in the Porcupine Basin, Ireland.

Mr Armitage says that the audit showed

that seismic can be quickly processed at over90% accuracy into geology and petro-physics, without well data, and better withwell data.

It showed that four out of five wells madeavailable after processing,were drilled intostructures in which insignificant closed reser-voirs existed.

The company is offering service process-ing and training courses in its methods in theIsle of Man, and is also planning with othersto enable a multidiscipline PhD project atTrinity College, Dublin, to explain, documentand apply the new processes and comparethem with what was being done previously.

GeoDirk contends that today?s explo-

ration and production efficiency levels arerelated to inability to quantify about 40% ofrisk relevant information,per cell.

Geodirk believes that this project shouldhelp exploration and production efficiencyin Ireland increase by 15 per cent through itsmethods, paving the way for use in otherbasins.

Having better subsurface knowledgemakes it possible to reduce drilling risk,andalso make sure the production facilities areengineered for the correct flow rate.www.geodirk.com

Isle of Man company Geodirk has some interesting new methods to improve knowledge about rock

formations between wells, by combining seismic data with measurements from inside the well, and

building up a picture of how the rock formed.

Subsurface uncertainty

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14/32

P e t r o l e u m N e t w o r k E d u c a t i o n C o n f e r e n c e sA Divis ion of Phi l ip C. Crouse and Associates Inc.

1 1 T H I N T E R N A T I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E O N

PETROLEUM DATA INTEGRATION

INFORMATION AND

DATA MANAGEMENT

A MSTE RD A M

April 19-20, 2007Amsterdam Marriott Hotel

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

H O U S T O N

June 27-29, 2007JW Marriott Hotel - Galleria

Houston, Texas USA

Join your associates for the best value, international, power-packed conference.You will profit from the mix of technology, future potential and current application realities presented.

Visit us online at www.pnecconferences.com

THE DATA EXPLOSION CONTINUES

Key technologies and drivers are requiring new practical solutions and

innovative thinking.

Hear critical papers presented from the leaders of data, information and

knowledge management, sharing with you their insights of the current

challenges and real world data management solutions. This is the most power-

packed, professional conference in the industry, providing you immediate return

and networking opportunities with managers leading the data explosion.

Presentation authors are global. This event has been designed for data and

information management practitioners and users.

C HALLENG ES F OR THE OI L AND G AS I ND USTRY

:: Integration & Processes :: Quality of Data

:: Cost Effective Solutions :: Interoperability

:: IM and Knowledge Management :: Quantity Management

CONFERENCES & EXHIBITS



Subsurface

13

month to month, and operations engineerswork the well from day to day.

Surrogate simulatorsLandmark has developed what it calls "sur-rogate models", which are not as sophisti-cated or complex as the full reservoir simu-lation model which have complex physicsequations,but can run much faster.The sur-rogate models run on neural networks.

They are basically short term models ofwhat is happening, which run off the mainsimulator. Something like a simulator 'lite'.

The surrogate models can reproduce areservoir simulation, or network flow simu-lation.

As the main simulation model is updatedin a process called history matching, whichmight take a number of weeks or months, itis used to train the surrogate model. But thesurrogate model can run much quicker, inseconds, to provide faster day to day infor-mation.The surrogate model can also be up-dated as needed (for example on a day-to-day basis) using data measured directlyfrom the field.Thus,the surrogate model can

give a clearer indication of what is likely tohappen over the short term.

So you have a situation where the bigreservoir model is updated every couple ofmonths in a long complex process, and thesurrogate model updates itself all the time.

The surrogate model can be connecteddirectly to sensors on the wells.

"They are very quick to adapt, and validover shorter periods of time," he says.

The surrogate models do not have somany complex differential equations,as tra-ditional simulators do, but they can run inseconds.

This is a different way of working withsimulators, that is, using the sophisticatedsimulator to train a neural network that canprovide information to an operations engi-neer or manager that can be used "pro-acively" in the field to improve oil or gas re-covery and efficiency.

Landmark has an interesting vision -enabling the people who actually op-erate the oil and gas wells to make use

of the reservoir simulators.Reservoir and production engineers have

been using simulators for many years, con-tinually refining them, so they make what

seems to be a very accurate model of whatis happening underground, so it can beused to make decisions about how to pro-duce the reservoir.

But the problem is that the people whoare actually working the reservoir, the oper-ations managers, are a long way away fromworking with simulators.

Operations managers typically look aftera large number of wells, and limit their at-tention to the wells which seem like theymight have a problem, eg a drop in produc-tion, water production, slugging or sand.

This is a behaviour pattern which couldbe described as 'reactive,' continually fixingthe most obvious field problems.

Landmark believes that a large amountof value could be achieved, if operationsmanagers could employ a more 'proactive'process, that is fixing problems before theyoccur.

In other words, they might be alerted toan increasing likelihood of water entering awell, due to information from the simulator,and could then take action accordingly (per-haps decreasing water injection in certaingeologic layers, or choking the well).

This kind of proactive operations getsmore critical in more complex wells for ex-ample with several different zones whichcan all be choked and controlled independ-ently with the latest interval control sys-tems.

When a problem occurs, for example wa-ter entering the well, it is not always easy tofix it reactively - for a start you have to workout which zone the water is entering thewell at.

But if you always have a continuous ideaabout how the water front is moving under-ground and access to accurate computermodels, you can see how close the front isto each well perforation and close it in ad-vance.

You can do sophisticated things like setthe system so flowrate from one zone canbe choked back relative to another zone, sothere is always more fluid coming out of thesecond zone.

You can change gas zones and oil zones,to tweak the gas-oil ratio, for example if youwant to use the gas to give the oil flow a lift,but still maximise the oil production.

You might also want to control the pres-

sure drop from the reservoir to the well, toreduce the risk of sand production.

You also have good data that can tell youwhen you need to do a well clean up, or useacid to enlarge the pore spaces.

It is possible to develop very sophisticat-ed tools for operations managers, such as

dashboard tools which tell them the statusof all their wells at a glance. "They can high-light problem wells and highlight solutionsmuch quicker," says Landmark research fel-low Stan Cullick.

Take-upPersuading operations managers to spendmore time with simulators is far from easy.

"We're finding it to be very difficult," saysMr Cullick."There's a very slow take-up.A lotof it has to do with organisational barriers,functional barriers."

Confidence in simulation models is a bigissue. In order to be persuaded to use thesimulators, operations managers have to beconvinced that the information comingfrom the computer software is better thantheir instincts from years of experience.

One of the problems, according to MrCullick, is that many oil and gas companiesare still only updating their simulator mod-els every 6-12 months.

It's not surprising that operations man-agers, responding to reponses at the well-head on a daily basis have little confidencein them,when they might describe a pictureof the reservoir which is 12 months old.

"If they see a simulation model predic-tion that was done 6 months prior, and theycan see a divergence in what's happeningfrom day to day, their level of confidencemay not be high."

"The reservoir behaviour gets discon-nected from the predictive model," he says.

To get the most out of a simulator, you al-so need to have reasonable expectations ofthe level of accuracy which will be achieved.

A simulator can't tell you that, for exam-ple,water breakthrough will happen at 3pmtomorrow; but it can indicate the likelihoodof water breakthrough over the next 30 daysas long as the model is up-to-date with thehistorical performance.

Most operations engineers, productionengineers, and reservoir engineers havecommon training, and understand each oth-er's jobs well, but they often have a differ-ent time focus, Mr Cullick says.Reservoir en-gineers who are the primary owners of sim-ulation models might focus on the next 2-3years of development. Production engi-neers, who are the primary owners of wellproduction models, monitor the well from

Bringing simulation to the wellheadDigital EnergyJournalspoke to Landmark Technology Fellow Stan Cullick

about Landmark's vision for bringing reservoir and well simulation right up to

the well head, as a tool operations managers can use.

Stan Cullick, Technology Fellow,Landmark



Communications and Automation news

www.caprock.comOil and gas satellite communicationscompany CapRock communicationshas signed a deal with offshore ship-ping company Otto Candies, to supplyVSAT communica tions to its fleet ofsupport vessels in the Gulf of Mexico.

It is using CapRock's stan-dard broadband package, withguaranteed data speed of 144kbps to 256 kbps.

Otto Candies will use thesystem for sending data such asfuel levels, weather / sea condi-tions, and information on cus-tomer instructions.

Company staff will be able tocall the vessels at any time fromtheir home or mobile phones,

rather than only be able to callfrom the office, as they did pre-viously.

Otto Candies is particularlypleased that the new systemprovides an always on connec-tion for a flat fee, rather thanpaying by the minute or thekilobyte, as with its previoussystem.

A problem with the previoussystem was that employeeswould often write e-mails in anabbreviated style so they wouldtransmit faster, and this createda margin for error.

CapRock VSATcomms for OttoCandies

www.nessco.co.ukScottish communications systemscompany NesscoInvsat has won a con-tract with Petrobras to supply a com-munications system for the Mexilho1 (PMXL-1) platform.

The system will include tele-phone exchange, radio commu-nications, GMDSS, personal ad-dress system, satellite terminalsand TV reception, and a back-up power system.

NesscoInvsat satcom contract with

PetrobrasThe contract was awarded

by contractor Mau Jurong ofSingapore. The system will beinstalled at Mau Jurong's ship-yard in Rio de Janeiro.

The platform will work theMexilho gas field in the SantosBasin region, offshore SoPaulo. The platform is 230mhigh and the largest offshoremetallic structure ever erectedin Brazilian waters.

www.nessco.co.ukUK satcoms company NesscoInvsathas a contract from Single Buoy Moor-ings (SBM) of Monaco to supply a com-munications system on the FloatingProduction Storage and Offloading(FPSO) vessels Mondo and Saxi-Batuque, owned by SBM and Sonan-gol, operating in the Kizomba f ield,offshore Angola.

The system will include apublic address system, generalalarm systems, telephone sys-tem, GMDSS radio, crane radios,Inmarsat satellite communica-tions, a telecoms emergencyshutdown system, closed circuitTV, navigation aids, weathermonitoring including radar seastate monitoring, and testequipment.

The systems will be installedat the Keppel shipyard in Singa-pore.

Meanwhile NesscoInvsat hasa 200,000 contract to supply

VSAT satellite communicationsystems for a FPSO currentlybeing converted from a tankerin Poland, to operate in the Sirifield offshore Brazil. It will be

NesscoInvsat satcoms on FPSOs off Brazil and Angola

operated by Teekay Petrojarl forPetrobras.

The contract was given byTeleconsult A/S. It includes Cand Ku band VSAT systems,satellite TV and an entertain-ment distribution network.

It will enable both Petrojarland Petrobras to extend theircorporate networks to the ves-sel.

Avin International installs Iridiumsatcom on tankers

Greek tanker company Avin Interna-tional has installed Iridium satellitecommunication phones on its fleet of22 oil and product tankers.

It will also install an Iridiumterminal in its company head-quarters in Athens.

This will allow the companyto phone its ships without hav-ing to use fixed telecom net-works at all, and hence deny-ing fixed telecom operatorsthe opportunity to add a mark-up to the Iridium prices.

Keeping the call routingcompletely within the Iridiumnetwork also ensures that thecommunications are secure.

The syste ms are bei ng in-stalled by Navarino Telecomunder a service agreementwith satcom company Stratos.

The system will also be usedfor seafarers to make phonecalls home, using pre-paid call-ing cards, so their calls are keptseparate from the companyIridium account.

The equipment will be inte-grated and tested at NesscoIn-vsat's workshops in Westhill, Ab-erdeen,and then installed at theshipyard in Gdansk.

Once the FPSO is in its stationin the Campos Basin of Southeast-ern Brazil,NesscoInvsat will man-age the VSAT service, connectingthe vessel to Petrojarl's Norwegianheadquarters.

Using a NesscoInvsat

communications system -

Single Buoy Moorings' FPSO

Merrick Systemsand BJ Servicesconduct downholeRFID testwww.merricksystems.comMerrick Systems together with oil-

field services company RJ Serviceshave conducted a successful pilot ofdownhole RFID (Radio FrequencyIdentification) tags.

The tags ran for over sixteenhundred hours in the field at 343Fdegrees under different fluid situ-ations including acid.

RFID tags can be used in assetmanagement to improve howdownhole operations are per-formed, how equipment controlsystems are applied, and howcomponents are selected, sup-plied,and managed to upstreamoil and gas operations.

According to Merrick its keydifferentiator is that it works bytaking a new approach to the de-sign and materials used to createcommercially reliable downholeRFID tags.Merrick's Rig-Hand andTool-Hand software products canbe used with the RFID tags to ef-fectively track and manageequipment through inspection,transportation and operations.

Merrick has also recently ap-pointed Philippe Flichy as VicePresident,Business Development.Prior to joining Merrick Systems,Philippe Flichy was co-founderand CTO of GlobaLogix, and has

also worked as Solutions Manag-er Oil Field Services North andSouth America at Schlumbergeroverlooking Real Time Produc-tion Optimization.

www.gotoemerson.comEmerson and Qatargas have signed along term alliance agreement, mak-ing Emerson the preferred supplier ofdigital automation solutions andQatargas a preferred customer for thecompany's oil, gas and liquefied nat-

ural gas (LNG) facilities.The agreement will build on

the strength of the two compa-nies' previous collaboration to au-tomate six multi-billion dollar fa-cilities in Ras Laffan over the pastfour years.

As automation supplier on ex-isting and future Qatargas proj-ects, Emerson will engineer,proj-ect manage, install,commission,and provide long term support onthe automation solutions for theoil, gas and petrochemical facili-ties in Qatar.

In addition,Emerson will install

its PlantWeb digital plant architec-ture with FOUNDATION fieldbuscommunications, integrate third-party equipment,and provide in-formation technology services.

Emerson to supplyQatargas


17/32

increases.If there is latency involved (eg a delay

when sending data to and from a satellite),this can cause problems elsewhere in thetelecoms network.

It is increasingly frequent for peoplefrom different companies to be sharing thesame computer network, for example ifemployees from different service compa-

nies are working on a rig, and BT can act asa trusted third party to make sure every-one can access what they need and the se-curity is robust.

ServicesBT is making a big push to develop its serv-ices offering.

The company believes there is a busi-ness 'sweet spot' of providing combinedcomputer networks, managed IT and serv-ices, such as consulting; in effect, being anoutsourced provider of a company's com-puter and voice communications networksand everything that goes with it.

A big recent acquisition was INS, an ITconsulting and software company based inMountain View, California with 7,000 em-ployees (see bt.ins.com). The acquisitionwas made earlier this year.

BT is also developing its IT securityservices.

As well as the UK National Health Ser-vice IT network, BT runs the data commu-nication networks for many cash (ATM) ma-chines in the UK, as well as for one of theworld's largest oil field services organiza-tions.

In October last year, BT bought Coun-terpane, which provides network securityservices for retail and financial services.

BT is keen to persuade oil and gas com-panies that they do not necessarily need to

manage their data security themselves. Da-ta security is getting increasingly complex,so there are benefits in working with acompany which has the expertise to man-age it.

BT a new service offering for oil and gas

UK telecoms company BT has quadru-pled its US oil and gas business since2004, and is making an aggressive

sales push in the industry, setting up con-nections to its network in areas of oil andgas activity, such as Brazil, Russia, India, Chi-na and the Middle East.

Ross Burley, head of US oil and gas sales,BT, reckons the company can provide tele-coms services in these places "probably bet-ter than anyone else in the oil and gas in-dustry."

BT now has 150 employees dedicated tooil and gas, many of which are based inHouston.

The company believes it has made greatstrides to get beyond 'British Telecom' - itwas originally the UK government ownedtelecom company.

Now,of its 100,000 employees,30,000 ofthem are working in global services,with of-fices in over 50 countries.

The oil and gas ser vice offering hingesmainly around MPLS (multiprotocol labelswitching) network, which is essentially aglobal data network (like the internet), butfaster, more secure and under the control ofone company (BT).

This means that you can do many thingswith MPLS which you would like to do withinternet but can't - such as having guaran-

tees of reliability, security and data speed.The internet is fairly reliable, fairly se-

cure, and fairly fast. Most of our e-mails ar-rive, and it works most of the time for voicecommunication (VOIP). You can get gooddata speeds on it most of the time.

But if you want something more reliableand secure, then MPLS is the next grade ofservice.

MPLS is true convergence betweenvoice and data; both travel down the samecables in internet packets.

BT is investing $20bn in its global IP net-work service, including acquisitions of 17companies around the world, to put it to-gether. It spans 170 countries.

BT continually optimizes its MPLS net-work, to make sure that there are no bottle-necks everywhere, all the data can get fromits source to its destination very quickly.

Data packets can be labeled as to theirurgency and take priority through the pipe.For example, it is much more important thatdata packets in a voice communication orvideo-conference arrive immediately (oth-erwise the conversation is broken), then da-ta packets in large file transfers.

Interestingly, there does not need to beany barrier between your internal corporatenetworks and external ones. BT can manageit all.

To illustrate its potential to managelarge, complex, secure internal corporate

networks, BT recently won a contract tomanage probably the world's most de-manding computer network, that of the UK'sNational Health Service. It will run the net-work both within the hospitals and between

hospitals.The data networkcarries people's confiden-tial health data, and realtime data from scanningmachines, and any down-time could result in doctorsnot having the data theyneed at a crucial time. Thisis possibly a bigger net-working challenge thananything the oil and gas in-dustry faces.

There are plenty morebenefits to having a global,managed network at yourfingertips.

You don't need to man-age your own companynetworks any more.Tuningeven small (eg 20 comput-er) networks within one of-fice so they work as fast as the internet is nota job for amateurs, as this writer has foundout.

When employees are travelling in othercountries, they can route their mobilephone calls over it, so no more expensiveroaming charges.

You can do high resolution videoconfer-encing at reasonable cost from anywhere inthe world whenever you like.

You can even connect closed circuit TVcameras to it, and monitor them whereveryou like.

"We look across becoming a new breedof services organisation, from just a carrierclass company," says Mr Burley.

"BT is absolutely moving to a new breedof services organisation."

Overly high network expectationsOne problem that probably all companieshave to grapple with is overly high expecta-tions of their computer networks from users.

It takes a while for people to grasp theidea of the internet which connects every-thing to everything.But having grasped thatidea, people can then easily start assumingthat you can get any data anywhere, so forexample a person working on rig can get in-stant access to a reservoir model over thecorporate network.

There are plenty of other potential prob-lems with making networks reliable, whichpeople do not necessarily think about, andBT makes it its business to be aware of andgood at sorting out.

Many countries around the world havestrong regulations about moving data outof the country, or need you to apply for li-censes, so they can keep a check of what isgoing on.

"If you perform seismic testing on a pieceof ground which another organisation

views as their asset - you cannot necessarilytransport that seismic data (property) out ofthe country," says Mr Burley.

Furthermore, as the data size increases,the complexity of the telecom network also

We all understand what a traditional telecoms company does - but BT is seeking to redefine it. The

company has quadrupled its US oil and gas business since 2004. We spoke to head of US oil and gas

sales Ross Burley.

BT is building a superfast and reliable worldwidedata communications network

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Communications

One providerMany oil and gas companies go to BT be-cause they like the idea of having one tele-coms provider for the whole company,rather than hundreds of providers.

Many oil and gas companies do businesswith hundreds of different telecoms suppli-ers and internet service providers, and thecontract management gets extremely com-plex.

Some of the telecoms providers are the

original national telecoms companies, fromthe old days where each country had a na-tional telecom company you had to dealwith there. Others were originally setup bycompanies which have since been acquired.

Rather than have in house staff spend-ing time managing all of these contracts, oiland gas companies can move their entirenetwork onto BT's MPLS.

BT provides a 'tiered' approach to themanaged network.

On the top tier, it provides total outsourc-ing services for a company's telecoms. "Wetake ownership of sets of people, and rela-tional capital,and migrate those services on-to BT's platform," says Mr Burley.

In the second tier of service, BT will takeownership of a company's existing telecomscontracts until they expire, then move themonto its own network.

In the third approach,BT will act as a tele-coms contracts manager (a "manager ofmanagers" approach), but BT will not man-age the oil company's staff.

Digital networked oilfieldFor the oil and gas industry, BT has devel-

oped what it calls its 'digital networked oil-field' solutions suite, a service to connect to-gether wells with corporate offices, so com-panies can monitor and optimise produc-tion in real time.

BT is not offering services in installingequipment in wells or selling modelling soft-ware of course, but envisages it could be'prime contractor' in a project to install acomplete digital oilfield working with othersoftware companies, which it already has ahealthy working relationship with.

Services can include designing the solu-tion and infrastructure, and working with re-spective partners to implement it.

BT would like to work with oil compa-

BT's Network Control Centre at Oswestry, UK - making sure that all the data is moving smoothly with no bottlenecks

nies for the whole life of the asset from ex-ploration to production.

For example, during the geologicalstage, it could provide rugged laptops withdata and voice connectivity over Iridium andInmarsat.

By the time the field moves into produc-tion,it is providing communications for 1000people,and a whole intranet system.

At the exploration phase, says head of oiland gas marketing Matthew Owen, thingsare kept very secret, and the company IT de-partment doesn't normally get to hear any-thing about what might be needed until thelast minute,when the company suddenly re-quires 50 rugged laptops with satellite com-munication, which work technically andlegally in the middle of the desert in Africa.

"Companies are often knee-jerk with ex-ploration," says Mr Owen."They say,we need50 laptops at short notice in Bolivia.We sug-gest, you sit down with BT in confidentiali-ty."

"People don't consider the need to get li-censes for sat-phones in certain centres."

BT suggests it takes a role as a trustedthird party to the oil company, and it canprepare whatever equipment and telecomsservices the company needs well in ad-vance.

BT can then help the company expand itscommunications system as it moves to-wards producing the field.

Other researchBT has a large research and developmentoperation.Two areas of potential interest tothe oil and gas industry are its research intofibre optics and RFID.

As part of its research into fibre optic ca-bles,BT discovered that they are so sensitivethey can be used to listen; they are so sensi-

tive that an audible sound can cause a dis-ruption to a signal through them.

So this acoustic sampling could be usedto monitor leaks in a pipe,and tell with fairlygood resolution where the leak is by listen-ing to a hiss, rather than the conventionalmethod with is trying to detect a leak usingflowmeters and comparing input and out-put.

BT has been researching how radio tags(RFID) can be incorporated into computernetworks, and sees plenty of oil and gas ap-plications, for example putting RFID chips in-to riser pipe to make it easier to track whichpipe is where and how many times it hasbeen used.


19/32May - June 2007- digital energyjournal 17

Communications

how the need plays into the business strat-egy, examining at every point the strategictrade-offs between improving asset avail-ability and asset utilization.

Design a technology architecture thatwill encompass all stakeholders, includingoperations, safety, security, maintenance,and information technology.

Create a policy manual that sets clearcriteria for implementing a wireless solu-tion.

Select and purchase hardware and soft-ware that is proven, scalable, and capableof understanding diverse protocols.

Prior to implementation, conduct an RFsite survey to identify wireless signal pathsand sources of potential interference.

Build ongoing maintenance, support,and optimization services into the plan.

Creating unified systems managementis not just good practice; companies thatattempt to implement more than a few tac-tical solutions without a unifying plan aretaking a great risk.

Few companies have the resources tomaintain staff necessary for all of thesesteps, especially because demand for spe-cialists with relevant skills is very high.

As such,outsourcing to one of the emerg-ing specialist firms may be the most cost ef-fective strategy for companies that want toenjoy the benefits of wireless networkingmost immediately with the least risk.

Wireless on offshore oil platforms

Wireless networking is now afford-able for offshore production plat-forms.

The cost of low-power wireless networkcomponents, including battery-powered,hazardous environment sensors, and re-mote terminal units to equip an entire plat-form, would fit comfortably within thebudget of most offshore operations.

Combined with long-range radiomodems and gateways such as from vMoni-

tor, which are also quite affordable, manyplatforms can afford to add sensors atprocess points that would not even havebeen thinkable with wired networks.

But the system will fail if it becomesmerely an exercise in collecting more datafor the sake of collecting more data, or col-laboration for the sake of collaboration.

Even as affordable as wireless network-ing has become,it is still overpriced if it isn'timplemented in the context of the businessstrategy.

New technologyPreviously, wireless solutions were not vi-able for offshore monitoring for many rea-sons.

The technology was still emerging andsecurity was variable at best.

Standards were incomplete or were of-ten in conflict with one another, and wire-less frequencies and communications pro-tocols clashed as well.

There was also general concern that wire-less communications were not yet robustenough for industrial strength communica-tions and there was no clear migration path.

The applications that did exist were tac-tical and not extensible and few if any infor-mation technology organisations were pre-pared to provide comprehensive support.

And because so much uncertainty sur-rounded this newly emerging technology

determining the true cost of operations wasall but impossible.Today,much has changed.Advances in safety, security, affordability,

and maintainability within the constraintsof frequency allocation now enable energycompanies to take full advantage of wirelesstechnology for challenging offshore pro-duction environments.

Maintaining networksWireless networks for offshore applicationsare also more maintainable than before.

It is now easier to troubleshoot, expand,modify, and upgrade the networks and thecomponents and without jeopardizing se-curity and availability.

Such improvement comes from the useof a single systems management approachthat treats and manages all wireless net-work technology in a unified, coherent ar-chitecture. Such a framework helps techni-

cal professionals to manage the diversityconsistently.

Saving moneyFor offshore production, money can besaved by combining mobile video and newsensors in the following ways:

Documents

#7 Digital Energy Journal - May 2007