Data Integration, Analysis and Visualization for Knowledge Management in Oil and Gas Upstream Industry - An Emphasis on Using Advanced GIS Technologies
Authors: Kumar Pahala 
Published: May 2016

This reference is for an abstract only. A full paper was not submitted for this conference.

The oil and gas upstream industries operate on its strength of its natural resources, its infrastructure, processing facility and technology, human resources and the most important energy products market demands. If one of the factors fluctuates, it affects the industry operations, planning and production. By nature everything is not gifted there are strengths and weakness, resources without capital, knowledge without management, will to do but lack of technology, strength in execution but with no quality no core know how, success with no sustainability, vision with no decision making, and so on so forth. To be a successful venture it is important to make use of best available resources and meet rest of shortcoming by best possible practical approaches. Every one could be a master in his own domain expert but to be a master of all in a particular capital venture one need to understand all available data collectively as teams and groups by analyzing, sharing experience, know how and knowledge.

Data exists in various forms such as paper and electronic documents, charts, maps, tables, digital formats in drawings, maps, pixels, blog objects etc. The row / column formats of a relational database tables are widely used in structuring the data. Database Software based format like Ms Access, Oracle, Foxpro, DB2, MS Sql etc. There are a number of image/raster/pixel formats BMP, JPG, GIF, TIFF, Geotif, etc. with different compression techniques. The vector drawings and GIS Maps also have different formats viz. dwg, dgn, dxf, mif, shp, cov, gdb etc. To make optimal use of data a user need data delivery format has to be defined for every data collection methods with associated metadata.

Data can be organized when a purpose for its usage are well defined. A user defined data format in operation will fetch ready to use data for analysis with no inconvenience. Data handling should cover various aspects of data evolution such as setting standard formats, procedures and its work flow for data collection to interpretation analysis, storage, archival, retrieval and access controls.

Data is a representation of particular property of defined objects or entities, data has no knowledge in its raw form, Deriving useful knowledge from large mass of data may involve simple qualitative or quantitative assessments, statistical techniques, discrete algorithms, empirical methods, intensive computation and research application sciences.

The process of data collection and its analysis, interpretation, usage application can be termed as Data to knowledge Engineering (DKE). A sound organization management will have a team of Data to knowledge Engineering experts (DKE) who stimulates the exchange of ideas, views, facts, and makes useful efficient decision. The DKE experts has to be derived from various domain specialization with multidisciplinary experiences so as to solve real world problems practically with at most efficiency.

The DKE group of experts to operate in a multidisciplinary approach, integrating its research groups excellence in model, hypothesis, empirical equations, discrete algorithms, statistical techniques and application engineering sciences. For example, in our Geological and Geophysical (GG) Software portfolio we have Landmark software including: GeoGraphix for geological interpretation, Seis Vision for geophysical interpretation, ProMAX for seismic processing and GeoProbe for 3D visualization and interpretation Roxar RMS for reservoir modeling; Surfer for mapping; PrizM for Log Analysis, and many more.

In petroleum upstream industry major capital decisions are made by the data analysis of Exploration & Production (E&P). The E&P involves a great deal of analysis of Geology and Geophysics data. The G&G data are being continuously produced in giga bytes and terra bytes, how to integrate various data formats, how to analyse, how to model and interpret, how to store and retrieve with simple equerry and search tools, how to display and visualize in 2D & 3D space and 4D space & time are all every day challenge problems in E&P data processing and management offices.

There are a number of G&G software available commercially as tools to analyse Oil and Gas formations, reservoirs, well logs, bore holes, geology, geophysics, geochemistry etc. To a name a few GeoFramme, GeoGraphix, Roxar RMS, ProMax, Seis vision, Landmark, PrizM, GIS etc. This paper concentrates in the use geographic Information System GIS technology for Oil and Gas industries.

This paper will show how GIS technologies can be used for various types of G&G spatial data and associated non spatial data management, processing, modeling, analysis, quering and presentation and extends how voluminous terrabites of data can be stored, retrieved, archived and managed efficiently for its knowledge management in oil and gas upstream industry. GIS technology is becoming a main stream tool for Facilities palnning and management, Enhanced oil recovery EOR studies, Reservoir modeling, Carbon sequestration. The paper involves reviewing various published work with citation slides. This paper's author is an Applied Geologist, works as GIS coordinators in Qatar Petroleum's Ras Laffan Industrial City, he has been using GIS for over two decades, this presentation will cover most of the examples produced using the ESRI's ArcGIS software tools, however the author recommends to use a blend of various other OGC compliance GIS software tools and maintain the data in industry interprobable formats.