Case Study: Effective Collection and Delivery of Depth-Indexed Well Data
Authors: Papadimitriou G. , Kozman J. B. , Wright D. G. 
Published: October 2013

Twenty years ago, no one could have predicted how much we would rely on information management (IM). Nearly every aspect of our lives has been affected by high-speed connections, data transfer and communication networks. Advancements in the technology over the last decade have made data management faster, convenient and more secure. The oil industry has benefited from these improvements, perhaps more than other industries, because it is an information led business. On the other hand, the oil industry is investing millions of dollars to collect, process, and interpret data, without any assurance that it is complete, correct and contextual. According to a survey conducted by Oracle, the oil and gas sectors could be losing as much as 22% of their annual revenue as a result of inadequate data management (Yu Vespi, 2012). Depth-indexed well data is an obvious place for the information mangement function to try to address parts of this concern. The following presents a case study of process and technology put in place at one Southeast Asia operator that resulted in positive advances in this area.

Mubadala Petroleum (MP) is a rapidly growing and ambitious independent international oil and gas organisation with a robust exploration, production and development program in Southeast Asia. With business unit operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, and a combination of Subsurface Technical Excellence and New Business Development in the logistical hub in Singapore, MP is evolving from a set of locally managed country offices to a mature international organization. This requires standardised and fit for purpose data management processes, at a level that will provide "sufficient rigour whilst neither stifling innovation nor introducing delay" (Wood Mackenzie, 2013). As corporate strategy focuses on management of producing assets, successful exploration, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A), depth-indexed well data from disparate sources becomes more and more a critical element in supporting this effort.

After establishing a centralized IM function in Singapore in 2012, Mubadala has taken on the task of collecting, standardizing, quality checking and delivering depth-indexed well data for several of the Business Units operating in Southeast Asia. Best practices have been developed or applied from software deployments in other organizations and from direct interaction and recommendations from end users of the data, and deployment strategies have been adopted and adapted to accommodate local regulatory requirements and business needs.

The well delivery capability was designed to work with available in-house software, and without a large investment in database infrastructure for the first phases. The primary goal was to have a single location and source for well data validated by petro-technical professionals serving as data owners, and to have a common, map-based index of that data available to all exploration and production users. A combination of commercial well data browsing and visualization tools and industry standard Geographic Information System (GIS) software was used to develop a solution that meets the needs of different disciplines in the organization.

Internally developed naming standards and quality control metrics are used to track and publish the progress of data collection and archiving to maintain a sense of urgency and ownership around data collection. At the same time, consistent workflows are implemented to facilitate health checks of depth-based data by data owners for timely analysis and decision support. GIS display techniques are used to give end users a graphical display of the location, amount of data available, and completeness of well data in the corporate datastore.