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A New technology Vision - How Big Data management is changing the oil & gas industry

The term ‘Big Data’, has been adopted by the oil & gas industry from other, ‘softer’ disciplines and is generally used to describe the Variety, Volume and Velocity of data used by the sector for its exploration and production activities.

The approach to ‘Big Data’ has been evolving. In the 1990s, the focus was on data integration – how to gather all available information in one place and make it easier for geoscientists and engineers to find oil and gas and to control the production. Digital gauges and devices transmitting information on the production rates and pressures were installed on rigs, replacing manual readings − the first generation of a ‘digital oilfield’ was created.

In the next decade, the efforts were concentrated on developing software able to integrate data across the major disciplines and speed up the workflow.

At present, the personnel is able to see all real-time data in one place, but is still required to make a huge number of decisions. The software tools have been constantly developed and enhanced, but the digital technology has not managed to overcome the major industry challenges yet. Moreover, the volume of data used by oil & gas producers is growing rapidly – some experts estimate that it is likely to double in two years’ time. (Moore's law)

The main industry challenges that require data

Finding and exploring oil and/or gas is an extremely complex and financially risky project. The main challenges that consume time and money and produce large volumes of data can be summarized as follow:

1. Hydrocarbons are difficult to find – oil reservoirs are usually located 5,000 to 35,000 feet below the Earth’s surface. At present, low-resolution images and well logs are used to locate and assess the reservoirs. The rock material is complex and contains components of different physical properties
2. Hydrocarbons are expensive to produce – the production requires large amount of human resources and machinery while the company must stay in profit.
3. Environmental and human safety risks must be recognised and addressed – each reservoir has a unique combination of geological, geophysical and other factors that may affect the way the production is designed to be profitable but safe.
4. The demographics of oil & Gas are to say the least a major concern. The average age is now 58 years, this represent the potential for a significant exodus of key industry experienced Subject matter experts over the next few years.
5. Bridging this gap has to be through encouragement and support of Universities and the deployment of simpler and more automated systems to reduce the reliance on labour and on skill-sets.
6. Establishment of Governance, Standards, procedures, processes and workflows across an organisation can address the demographic challenge and enable oil & gas companies to remain competitive, productive and cost efficient.

The industry acknowledges that the great breakthrough could be done by using the data in a smarter and faster way. At the same time, the sector remains strongly resistant to the solutions generated outside the industry – the gap between petroleum professionals and ‘other’ data scientists remain strong and solutions created outside the oil & gas sector have been rarely applied by the producers on a commercial scale.

However, that game is not over yet, with some global technology giants, such as IBM, Microsoft or GE, spending billions on their attempts to enter this market. And the stake is high − among the top ten Fortune’s Global 500 organizations, nine represent oil and advance technology to a balance between the human input and computer based input to their competitive and financial advantage.

What the future will bring?

Industry experts forecast, that the next years will be dedicated to developing solutions able to gather all of the data generated by the industry in order to automate the simple decisions and provide guidance on the more difficult ones.

When the situation is clear, this system with built-in intelligence will generate the answer, while in more complex situations, the personnel will be provided with a set of potential outcomes to facilitate the decision making process. These advancements will allow reducing the risk and make it possible to find and produce hydrocarbons cheaper, safer and with less damage to the environment.

The examples of technology that may change the way the industry operates are automated interpretation systems that can learn as the users interpret seismic data. First prototypes of those already exist and are being tested. The next stage in will be merging this knowledge with other types of data, such as personnel and environmental risks, machinery, etc. This integration will make it easier to decide on the most productive actions to be taken.

Data Analytics - Data Analytics will most likely be the most profound influence on the industry, the ability to analyse masses of data to execute a detailed specific and granular interrogation of data, will likely change the status quo for the management, processing and interpretation of data. Clearly this can be applied across the industry from PRM data through to 4D Seismic, Well Engineering and Production data. Streaming data, delivering both "trends" and "spikes" can be evaluated and interpreted within minutes to days or weeks compared to the weeks and months of a previous generation of software.

Recently this has been described as disruptive technology, solutions or applications that change the current "stale" and often outdated technology of yesteryear.

Westheimer is working with Oracle to build, test and develop this technology and the solutions of the future. We believe that granular, rich data, effectively captured, can and will deliver key, critical information to the Geoscientist, in a manner that appropriate decisions and indeed remedial actions can be initiated.

Its a balance of the traditional versus the evolving technologies and how these can be managed and adopted to the benefit of oil & Gas companies across the industry