E-catalogue
The new joint venture will provide a standardized electronic catalog and contract information for upstream products and services. Participants are ABB, Baker Hughes, BJ Services, Cooper Cameron, ENSCO, FMC, Halliburton, National Oilwell, Schlumberger, Smith International, Transocean Sedco Forex, and Weatherford.
B2B
The design phase of the project is underway and later, OFS Portal services will be available worldwide to all customers, either individually or through B2B exchanges. Suppliers in all oilfield products and services segments would have the opportunity to participate in OFS Portal.
Integration
Responding to requests from B2B exchanges and portals, as well as many individual customers, OFS Portal members claim that e-commerce has enormous potential benefits for both buyers and sellers. The integration of different supplier offerings into multiple e-procurement environments will reduce overall costs and improve efficiencies.
Not for profit.
As a not-for-profit independent service, OFS Portal will format and publish standardized content, enable subscription by users, establish transaction standards, and facilitate other aspects of the procurement process. OFS Portal will not operate as an exchange for executing transactions.
CD-ROM
From its beginnings as a paper-only subscription newsletter, PDM has grown to encompass a public domain website www. oilIT.com, a popular CD-ROM Archive, a free monthly email headlines service and our growing online Buyer’s Guide.
Intranets
The latest addition to the PDM publishing empire, the electronic edition is now widely distributed to oil and gas company Intranets.
250,000 hits
It is fitting that as the paper issue celebrates its 50th edition, the website has received its quarter millionth hit! (see the article on page 4 of this issue) and is referenced by all the major search engines.
Future?
Our plans for the next 5 years? Keep learning, trying to explain the inexplicable and stay alert. Who knows what we’ll be talking about in 2005!
Death of distance
Focusing on the importance of location is interesting in the context of the evolving world of e-business. First lets look at how location is being undermined by technology. In a seminal article,* way back in the mists of time (1995 - that’s older than PDM!), the Economist’s Frances Cairncross forecast the ‘death of distance,’ as competition between operators and new technology would drive telephone charges down. This was supposed to make a long distance call no more expensive than a local call. Well, we may not be there in voice telephony, but we sure are in data, as a web browser mouse click may involve interaction between machines all over the planet - all for no extra charge.
Yada, yada, yada
If distance is dead, then in a sense, location (which is a sort of inverse of distance) is dead too. Not perhaps to the extent that boo.com investors believed, as people seemingly still prefer to walk into Gap and try clothes on. But again, in the field of data communications, the location of a service provider is becoming immaterial. So what is the requirement above all others for successful e-commerce? Its not "location, location, location" any more, its .... "yada, yada, yada." But what is "yada?"
Bandwidth3
The first candidate for yada is bandwidth. It was bandwidth that killed distance, and you can’t have enough of it. Buy as much as you can afford! But bandwidth has already done its job on both distance and location. Bandwidth is already yesterday’s "yada," not tomorrow’s killer attribute.
Beyond bandwidth
Judging by the Application Service Provision (ASP) offerings on show at the Calgary SEG convention (see pages 6 and 7 of this issue) we are already in a sense, beyond bandwidth. It maybe easier to perform some highly interactive operations in a very high bandwidth environment like Calgary. But many of the demos as the show were interacting with data on servers in Houston.
Expectations
What is happening is that as expectations run ahead of nominal bandwidth, good old ingenuity steps in, with clever strategies of minimizing traffic. These optimizations are operating at many scales right down to the re-use of copper in the local loop. Who ever thought you’d be able to get the megabit bandwidth that DSL delivers out of your phone line.
Killer attribute
While e-commerce and ASP are the headlines today, I think they would represent something of a whimper-ish end to the Internet revolution. Both ASP and much e-commerce offerings today share a common trait. They are ‘middle-man’ applications. At the extreme end of the spectrum, a start-up might offer ASP services without actually having any software to ‘provide.’ The business model here is ‘grab the high ground’ and is predicated on the idea that a) there is high ground to grab and b) future competition will not be able to catch up. Both of these predicates are somewhat shaky.
Clicks and mortar
A strong e-commerce offering needs more substance than this. In the field of ASP, the software vendors are coming into the field as "clicks and mortar" enterprises. In other words, they exemplify the leveraging of a traditional business via the web. What distinguishes these businesses is that they have something the newcomers do not - content.
Content3
Yes, my candidate for ‘yada’ is content. It is content which sorts men from boys on the web, whether it is software licenses, data or information. The key deals being done today revolve around the sharing and distribution of such content. A lot of alliances and deal-making is being done in this field as content providers team with software vendors and technology specialists. Maybe we will reach the nirvana of being able to buy fully-functional software pre-loaded with data sometime soon. But there is just one small problem.
How much?
The big issue today in buying e-data in bite sized chunks, or software on pay as you go is pricing. How much you charge for the new integrated services, and future web usage patterns, will be extremely visible on the profit and loss statement. For clicks and mortar shops, with established revenues, a few cents here or their could reflect, in a most embarrassing manner, on the bottom line.
* A Survey of Telecommunications: The death of distance - Cairncross, Frances, The Economist 30-Sep-95.
Handover
At this point the EuroFinder consortium, handed over the Development Project to GeoQuest for the implementation phase. All other phases were tendered, but this was done to ensure that the Project goals were achieved and that GeoQuest ‘owned’ the Project. Thus the concept of data modeling by committee has been proven as this was delivered at the end of the last Phase.
Unwieldy?
It may be the case that Epicentre is unwieldy. We have yet to see a project plan for the implementation phase of EuroFinder which was a deliverable from the second phase.
Progress?
GeoQuest have consistently swapped staff on the project, demonstrating a lack of commitment. The ‘customers’ are unaware what if any progress has been achieved since June 1999, In spite of holding at least 3 customer meeting to let GeoQuest hear the concerns raised. I'd say that perhaps GeoQuest is not willing to listen to it’s customers, or to put effort where it has been requested.
Withheld!
Never mind, the contract for second phase was structured in such a way that the remaining 20% would be with held until this phase was fully delivered. Obviously GeoQuest do not need the money!
Hugh Banister,
Global IT Manager,
Premier Oil.
I really wish that you had spoken to CDA before publishing this article. I am available to expand upon any of the above points but I cannot of course claim to represent Pilot, the DTI or UKOOA.
Malcolm Fleming,
Chief Executive,
CDA.
Advanced
Magic Earth describes GeoProbe as "advanced, multi-attribute visual interpretation software" which transforms massive seismic datasets, well logs and other related data into "lucid, interpretable 3D images" of hydrocarbon reservoirs in real time. The technology’s speed and capability enable users, from geoscientists to business managers, to complete "comprehensive analyses of the earth’s subsurface and make better-informed decisions about exploration and production activities in hours and days instead of weeks and months."
Peacock
Commenting on the announcement, Steve Peacock, Vice President of Upstream Digital Business for BP, said, "BP’s agreement with Magic Earth complements our existing petrotechnical applications suite and supports our focus on accelerating Upstream growth and performance. We believe that this technology will significantly improve our productivity, decision making and opportunity generation along the full value chain, resulting in rapid, quality prospect generation, shorter development cycle times, and additional in-field opportunities. It also reflects our intent to be progressive and innovative in the rapid application of new, leading-edge technologies."
Zeitlin
Michael Zeitlin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Magic Earth, added, "Magic Earth is delighted by BP’s acquisition and application of our technology. Our dynamic volume visualization and interpretation system has begun a revolution in exploration and production. Under this agreement, we will cut BP’s cycle time in 3D interpretation while improving the company’s exploration and production evaluations and drilling programs." More from www.magic-earth.com.
Scoop
Most retrieved article was our November 1999 scoop on Magic Earth’s GeoProbe with other popular titles as diverse as "XML - the new Swiss Army Knife" (August 1999), "PetroView Enterprise" (May 1999), Phoenix’ SEG-Y Viewer (November 1999) and "The E&P data warehouse" (January 2000). All these articles received over 100 hits a piece.
Search Engines
The oilit.com website is now registered with Yahoo and regularly spidered by the major search engines such as All The Web, AltaVista, Google, Lycos and Northern Light.
Velocity model
This typically involves review and interpretation of velocity models and seismic data during a depth-imaging project. GXT President Mick Lambert said "BLink gives our clients global, desktop control of seismic imaging projects outsourced to GXTechnology, and interactive access to their GXT service team and specialized computing resources"
Web browser
Desktop access is from a web browser via a secure link and allows also for project monitoring and management, accounting and contractual supervision. In test at a client site for over a year, BLink is now available for general release. More from www.gxt.com.
PDM - Tom, you are Seismic Micro-Technology’s sole owner, president and chief salesman, what is SMT’s market share of interpretation software?
Smith - well there are 15,000 SEG members which gives us 8,000 as a good estimate of interpretation seats. We have some 1,400 currently and in the first half of this year sold as many as in the whole of 1999. By that calculation that will give SMT a 20% market share SMT by year end 2000.
PDM - How did you get there?
Smith - Our history dates back to 1994 when we released the first geo-software application on Windows NT. Even then we were working on a tight integration of geology and geophysics and we were not writing software for the specialist user.
PDM - what data model does your software deploy?
Smith - In a sense data models are old technology. SMT is data and data model independent. We can run our software against an Oracle server, SQL Server and Access. In fact the same software is used for a stand-alone installation or at Exxon Corp.
PDM - What database is actually delivered with the Kingdom Suite
Smith - Our application binary code includes pointers to a database - by default this is Microsoft Access.
PDM - You have established a reputation in the field of geophysics, what about geology?
Smith - in version 7.0 - due out end 2000, EarthPac will introduce enhanced integration in the following areas.
1. Full support for geology.
2. Time and depth integration throughout - this is especially important for sub-salt plays. You will be able to flip back and forward between time and depth.
3. Authoring - you will be able to "stamp" your interpretation with time and ownership and to collaborate on projects. We call this our Digital Library - our first venture into Knowledge Management.
4. Multiple simultaneous users will be able to share the same data. This is not just for the big guys, in a small E&P shop, this will allow communication say between the interpreter and the data loader.
PDM - Your third point reminds us of parts of POSC’s Shared Earth Model venture. Will you be using this work?
Smith - We follow what is going on and use some of POSC’s work. But you cannot afford academic purity on a PC. Performance is the key.
PDM - What of the various interoperability initiatives? How does your software link to other vendor environments?
Smith - With Landmark we offer our "Tunnel L" direct pipe to the Landmark API. We will soon have a "Tunnel S" for Schlumberger.
PDM - Have you looked at Windows 2000?
Smith - Of course, we have tested on Windows 95, 98, 4.x and 2000. We are especially interested in the new Microsoft Active Directory technology.
PMD and have you checked out Microsoft Transaction Server for interoperability?
Smith - yes but at the present it is too slow to replace our Tunnel technology.
PDM - You were initially critical of Open Spirit’s lack of a C++ API. Do you see Open Spirit as a replacement for your proprietary Tunnel-X technology?
Smith - We aspire to Open Spirit. It is a wonderful concept and with GeoQuest’s involvement has benefited from vision and experience. We take GeoQuest’s involvement at face value, but nevertheless our technology should stand on its own merits. Furthermore, Open Spirit now has both Java and C++ API’s so we can hook into the CORBA bus. In fact by the end of the year we will have to choose between OS and Tunnel G.
PDM - what’s next for SMT
Smith - Complete integration of Geology and Geophysics.
SAIT
Landmark awarded $13 million worth of software to the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT). Landmark also announced a new customer support website www.myLandmark.com which will provide clients with example workflows, account information, ‘philosophy’ and ideas. Landmark also boasts a new stand, modeled around a Monopoly board and the latest freebie is a large squeezy red dice! All intended to underscore Landmark’s ‘stochastic’ push into financial and economic software.
LiveQuest
GeoQuest’s Application Service Provision (ASP) offering is maturing. ASP is now available out of 10 Data Management Centers throughout the world. The demo kicks off with a smartcard secured log-in to a Java enabled web browser. Tarantelle Enterprise II middleware provides compression of transmitted data and acts as an X-Windows emulator. Note that this flavor of ASP is unlike the ASP as we described in our report on Microsoft Tech Ed 2000. Here the look and feel is entirely that of the original application. The browser is just used to fire up the remote link. This is good news in that no retraining on the user interface is required, and all mouse actions are preserved. But is not so good if you expect your browser to add a homogeneous look and feel to disparate applications.
Resume
The log on resumes a previously abandoned session where you left off. Credible performance is obtained over a 128k ISDN line, at least for non graphic intensive apps - the first target for ASP. We asked the thorny question of pricing, but this is "under construction". The technology is up and appears to be running well.
Merak
The marketing material announced a new "Global Energy Software Standard". But the reality is more prosaic as Merak’s Val McIntyre explained to PDM. The "global" and "standard" tags, refer to Merak’s market share with 600 client companies including BP, Chevron, Shell and Exxon. Merak’s Peep contains "all" tax régimes and allows capital planning to roll-up across these. Peep is used in "96% of the Canadian industry and over half of the US." Peep software is written as Microsoft COM objects and contains 2 million lines of code. Currently each Merak application has its own data store, but in the longer term these will be integrated. Perhaps significant in this context is the naming of Merak former Houston chief Neil Buckley as president of Open Spirit.
Magic Earth
The marketing push from SGI/Texaco’s start up Magic Earth (ME) continues. ME offered the best breakfast at the show, and made the first page of the Calgary Herald’s business section. In the article, ME’s Mike Zeitlin offered some insight into ME’s business plan saying "We patterned the business out of the dot-coms - [but] we describe ourselves as being ‘beyond dot com’ - we figured out how to be profitable." The system used for the Magic Earth demo is as grandiose as the data on display. The 32 GB (yes that is a "G") of RAM facilitates the roaming and on-the-fly processing of the 9GB of trace data covering some 200 OCS blocks. The software and workflows are improving such that interpretive auto-picking of a GOM base salt event is achieved in a credibly fast manner. Zeitlin invited "our colleagues from Landmark and GeoQuest in the crowd to look closely at the fastest system in the world. We are hiring!" Software under development for auto-picking faults was less impressive, especially as compared with the FPCube technology we saw from Phillips (see page 12 of this issue).
Open Spirit
Just behind a packed Magic Earth was the Open Spirit (OS) booth. A couple of years ago these guys were pulling the crowds, but no longer. Seems like the road from whiz bang to delivery is long, and the crowd’s attention span is short. OS is planning its first commercial release for October 2000. Gocad is the first truly OS compliant application, and GeoQuest will be providing OS-enabled versions of Variance Cube and Cube Math. OS now recognizes the world of the PC, and Halliburton’s WellView will be pluggable to Merak’s Peep, which listens to the OS events via a Java-Com-CORBA bridge from Linar. We watched a credible demo involving a "virtual project" aggregating data resident in both Finder and OpenWorks. A joint venture with Int is producing run-time OS viewers. These will let a user visualize well log curve data in GeoFrame and OpenWorks from a PC. Another significant development is the increasing use of the Event Gateway to listen to events (such as changes in a pick) in different packages, and to broadcast them to other applications.
Technology
Schlumberger’s Q-Technology seismic recording system - originally announced for the land environment - is now available for offshore and down hole acquisition. Q can theoretically record up to 80,000 individual point receiver signals, an order of magnitude more than conventional recording. But while capturing all this potential bandwidth to tape is desirable, processing houses are not yet capable of handling such data volumes. While waiting for them to catch up, the answer is to perform digital group forming in the field and the Q-system provides a toolbox of group-forming algorithms which can be tailored to geological conditions, providing sharper f-k discrimination than is possible with conventional analogue summing.
UpstreamInfo
Raytheon is used to dealing with large data volumes and intractable IT problems. For NASA and the FBI Raytheon moves around 1 petabyte of information per year and for the latter, developed "Silent Runner" the software used to hack the hackers - which located the ILOVEYOU virus originator in the Philippines within 24 hours of its appearance. Teaming with The Information Store and erstwhile Halliburton associate EDS, the May 2000 start-up UpstreamInfo (UI) is to deploy all this technology to manage upstream information and data "anytime anyplace" on a pay for use basis and including ASP software and delocalized infrastructure - the "Megacenter". Currently, UI has 10 clients including Pemex and over 3TB of traffic per day at the Megacenter. UI has signed with Magic Earth for management of data for the Visionarium. The browsing and e-commerce software used is Istore’s PetroTrack (also used as a front end to PetroBank by PGS) which assures password control, authentication and manages entitlements. E-commerce is controlled by Raytheon’s Digital Rights Management technology which stops an un-entitled user from downloading viewed data to a local disk. UI president and CEO is George Steel, formerly with SSI.
Internet processing
Dimitri Bevc described a prototype Internet Seismic Processing System (INSP) developed by 3D Geo Development Inc. and Stanford University. A browser-based Java client allows geologists and geophysicists to interact with data in the remote processing center over the net. INSP uses Java, Java Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS) and a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for security and user privileges. Bevc claims the system will empower end users to perform compute intensive tasks such as depth imaging and improve client-processor interaction during conventional processing.
VizServer
Using SGI’s latest Visual Server technology, you can now use a Sun workstation as a front end to SGI’s Onyx server equipped with InfiniteReality graphics subsystems. The OpenGL Vizserver performs graphics processing on the server and images are compressed and shipped to the client over the network. Users can access volume visualization, gigabyte memory resources and high performance I/O from the desktop. The technology is used by Veritas to distribute interactive visualization throughout the processing house and into client sites. Veritas’ Dan Knupp claims "users can interact with seismic volumes which are up to 200 times larger and 20 times faster than with desktop systems". Other industry users of the Vizserver include Statoil and ASP specialist GeoNet.
Western’s Expeditor
At last year’s SEG we chatted with the Expeditor person, but she turned out to be an out of work actress who had just learned her lines for the show. Pointing us in the direction of two gentlemen selected at random, she made her exit and we learned next to nothing of Western’s foray into heavy duty data management. This year, the actress has gone and there are real data management people staffing the stand. Bill Rimmer and Richard Johnston explained how Expeditor is used for outsourced data management by Western’s clients. (The Expeditor can be installed in house, but would loses the advantages of ASP.) Expeditors are installed in Houston and London and are of course used by Western itself, notably for the brokerage of BP’s GOM data and Phillips Alaska data. There are around a million miles of GOM data in the Houston center. Both centers deploy around 30 STK silos. In Houston there is an additional 3 million cu. ft. of physical storage. Expeditor manages tape library lending functions and talks to Recall, Western’s well log repository. All that is needed on the client station is a web browser. X-emulation software from Citrix makes it all happen. In the context of the new Western Geco restructuring, PDM understands that while Schlumberger’s Finder will stay with GeoQuest, Expeditor is slated to move into the new unit.
Hays IDMA
Built around the flagship RSO product, IDMA now offers a choice of GIS front end (Finder, ArcView, OpenExplorer) and management of hard copy and digital data types. Hays manages Texaco’s seismic Archive using the software. Other functionality includes integrated vectorizing (with Neuralog), polygonal cut-out of seismic from seismic data library and remote data access of Hays 3494 robotic tape store in Houston.
Kelman/StrataWeb
Strataweb (now acquired by Petroleum Place) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Kelman technologies International (KTI) to work on e-commerce seismic data delivery through the www.strataweb.com portal. Strataweb’s GIS browser is based on Autodesk’s GIS 2000 technology and can be deployed in-house, to allow viewing of in-house and public domain data. Currently Strataweb is a portal for the (Canadian) Veritas Landbase and well data from QC Data and IPC.
Alan Faichney of UK-based Concept Systems is to take over from Mike Norris as Chairman of the SEG’s Technical Standards Committee.
MAD
The UK Offshore Operators Association has approved the Marine Ancillary Data Standard (ADS) which now becomes the SEG-UKOO ADS Version 1. The new formats and C source code for a sample ADS reader are available on www.seg.org/publications/tech-stand/index_body.html. Most SEG standards and links to UKOOA standards are also freely available on the site.
SEG-Y Revision 1
SEG-Y revision 1 is being drafted by the PESGB Data Management Group. Main features of rev. 1 are: Stanzas added to dataset header, standard locations in trace headers. The new revision also accommodates high capacity tapes and other media. Grid Exchange File (GXF), an ASCII file format for gridded data is now in Revision 2.00. Changes include data compression, through the use of base-90 numbers and simple repeat value compression. Revision 2 has been adopted by the SEG Gravity/Magnetics Committee.
Polarity
Polarity for field acquisition is well defined by the SEG 1975 and 1993 polarity standards. But processing display polarity is not directly covered by these standards. It was therefore proposed to extend the current acquisition based polarity standards to the processing environment. Any extension would need to address multi-component datasets.
PC-based workstations usually vaunt their ‘commodity’ technology as opposed to the high-cost, bespoke hardware of the graphics workstation. But now and then, the PC brigade just have to have a go at building a ‘dream machine’ and this inevitably involves some esoteric ironware. A group of companies are teaming to squeeze maximum graphics performance for volume rendering from a PC with an extensive combination of dedicated hardware and software.
VuPAK
Leader of the pack is Seismic Micro-Technology, Inc. (SMT), which has provided the end-user application in the form of VuPAK, part of SMT’s Kingdom Suite for seismic interpretation and modeling. SMT has enhanced VuPAK to display large voxel cubes of seismic reflection data. VuPAK now includes voxel rendering capabilities. A seismic volume may be quickly scanned with slice animations, chair-cut and oblique-cut displays. Its full opacity and color controls simplify the analysis of subtle anomalies.
RTViz/TGS
RTViz, a division of Mitsubishi Electric, has contributed "VolumePro" a 3D graphics board capable of rendering large data sets. TGS of San Diego has brought its Open Inventor 2.6 software to the table. Open Inventor is built atop of the OpenGL graphics language. The VolumePro 500 PCI board is available with up to 256MB of volume memory. Multiple boards can be installed on the PC.
IBM
IBM completes the offering with a high-end PC optimized for high performance graphics. The platform includes dual 800MHz CPUs, 1Gb of RAM, an 18Gb hard disk for storage, and a 133MHz bus. Dual screen support is provided by twin Wildcat 4000 video cards supporting 2560 x 1026 pixel screens.
EarthPAK
SMT is to complete its visualization package later this year with the release of EarthPAK. This geological interpretation package complements current geophysical technology and will include a number of tools for hydrocarbon production monitoring and management.
Petris Technology Inc. released a new version of PetrisX, (also know as The Internet Data Room) at the PLS Dealmakers Show in Houston this month. PetrisX now includes an enhanced user Interface, improved collaboration and search functionality.
Evaluate
PetrisX 2.0 allows buyers, sellers, geologists and engineers to evaluate the technical data of a property over the Internet, from remote locations. From a desktop, an interested party can engage others in a "remote, controlled presentation" of the data room.
VOIP
Also new is an innovative "Voice over IP" (VOIP) facility that lets parties converse over the Internet on a toll free basis.
Buyer profile
A buyer profile is now available to all PetrisX registrants allowing a buyer to list criteria of interest for a property. If a match is found, the buyer is notified by email. PetrisX 2.0 also boasts better navigation, map or text searches, more informative member and seller pages, and requests for original and licensed data for properties on the site.
Secure
PetrisX deploys high security technology for data upload and distribution.
While some extol the virtues of outsourcing and off-site ASP-based computing, Phillips Petroleum’s (PPCO) seismic imaging group based in Bartlesville, believes that the best way to perform number-crunching is on a humongous in-house mainframe. PPCO’s strategy seems to be "Buy Fastest Available."
$3.6 million
PPCO has just signed a check for $3.6 million order for the first Cray T3E-1350 system, a faster model of the product line that holds the current world record for sheer compute speed. Phillips will use the new supercomputer to perform 3-D seismic processing and imagery of very large data sets. The new system features 136 processors clocked at 675 MHz, each capable of 1.35 billion calculations per second. These are supported by a cool 84 gigabytes of main memory.
Valasek
PPCO seismic imaging group project manager Paul Valasek said "Finding oil is increasingly challenging as we explore deep offshore prospects beneath salt layers that distort seismic data. We use Cray technology to run massive seismic imaging applications that correct this distortion and help us to ’see’ the geological strata more clearly and help reduce risk in well placement."
Wyatt
PPCO research leader Kay Wyatt added "We also use the Cray technology to assist us in multi-component seismic which improves our understanding of rock and fluid properties." Cray Inc. acquired the Cray Research business assets from Silicon Graphics So far business is good with second quarter revenues of $51 million. Net profits for the same period were $5.1 million.
IHS Energy Group is launching a Hosting Center - a new service for online access to E&P data management systems and applications. Initially, the service will host IHS’ P2000 and IRIS21 systems. Customers will also have the option of storing proprietary data and retrieve it through custom or third party applications. IHS will manage the information, systems and the network infrastructure at its secure facility, providing customers direct access to the data they need without the need for on-site IT resources or the requirement to update data.
Cooper
IHS VP of Information Systems Steve Cooper said "The Hosting Center provides direct access to the most current worldwide E&P data through sophisticated display, query and retrieval applications. For customers who frequently access tremendous volumes of data, this service is a more practical and cost-effective solution than our transactional-based system. It relieves customers of the burden of updating, administering, and supporting these systems internally, allowing them to focus key personnel on other tasks."
P2000/Iris21
In addition to offering its own P2000 and IRIS21 applications through the Hosting Center, IHS Energy Group has formed strategic alliances with vendors selling products that support IHS data models. These applications will be hosted on powerful servers that will provide rapid retrieval of data, which will be accessed through direct, high-speed connections or through the Internet.
BG International (BGI) is to deploy the full range of GeoQuest’s E&P software including the PC-based Drilling Office suite. BGI Technology & Resources Manager Roger Doery said "We believe this represents an opportunity to upgrade our technology, introduce new and improved workflows and to provide training to our technical staff. This should result in better skills for our people, improved reservoir description and definition and greater productivity."
Whole shebang!
BGI will now use all of GeoQuest’s commercial geological, geophysical, modeling, mapping, reservoir simulation and drilling applications. Around 400 projects worldwide will be converted to GeoFrame data format by BGI and GeoQuest personnel. GeoQuest will also provide consultancy services, applications support, project management advice and expertise. GeoQuest is to design a training program for BGI’s GeoTechnical staff.
Toma
GeoQuest EAME VP Ihab Toma added "Through this global contract we will be able to support BG International’s goal of establishing an integrated platform for exploration, production and drilling. BG International is one of a number of major oil and gas companies who recently have turned to GeoQuest to deliver a comprehensive software solution for E&P operations."
Halliburton recently participated in the drilling of what is believed to be one of the world’s most extreme inclination wells - at an angle of 164.7 degrees - offshore South East Asia. That’s so far beyond horizontal that the bit was traveling nearly vertically upwards!
Deviation
As you might imagine, this represented a ‘deviation’ from the initial well program following a mid-well change of objective. The technical challenge was handled by the Halliburton Energy Services team, using Baroid’s DFG+ Hydraulics and Downhole Rheology modeling package. This matched surface rheology data with downhole requirements for hole cleaning and cuttings transport. The maximum total vertical depth of the well was 2,918 meters (9,571 feet) - starting at 2,900 meters (9,512 feet) measured depth, the team drilled the well at 90 degrees or higher. At a total depth of 5,730 meters (18,794 feet), the hole was circulated until the shakers cleaned up and the bit was pulled without pumping or back reaming. Had the angle been increased another 15 degrees it would have drilled vertically upwards towards the surface!
Powers
Halliburton Energy Services’ president Jody Powers said "We are thrilled to be involved in the success of this world record well. This accomplishment further exemplifies how cooperation and communication between partners, the use of technologically advanced and environmentally friendly products, and the ability to make real time changes can optimize our customers’ reservoir performance."
The 2000 POSC Annual Meeting will be held in Houston at the Crystal Ballroom at The Rice on the morning of 31 October followed by a Member Meeting that afternoon and the following day. The Ten Year Celebration on Halloween night will be held at the same location.
Remember Milano
POSC CEO David Archer told PDM "We are trying to bring many of the people who have been part of our history back together for these events. We'll try in a Texas sort of way to match the standard set at some of the previous POSC celebrations. Milan in ‘96 comes to mind! Watch our site (www.posc.org) for more details as we get closer to the time of the meetings."
Denver-based TransZap (TZ) is an application service provider (ASP) and enterprise application integrator providing B2B e-commerce infrastructure to the oil industry. TZ’s flagship product, XML-based Oildex Connect, automates oil industry B2B workflows and delivers secure Internet transactions. Oildex Connect connects and interoperates with popular oil industry back office systems via the PetroXML standard.
Petrolis
TransZap has acquired Petrolis of Oakland, Calif. The Petrolis configurable exchange systems integrate ‘next-generation’ enterprise resource planning applications (ERP) and Internet and client-server products with legacy standards such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI). Petrolis products will be integrated with TransZap’s Oildex Connect solutions.
Flanagan
Peter Flanagan, President of TransZap, said : "Petrolis’ focus on revenue transactions dovetails perfectly with our first product release, InvoiceConnect." Petrolis customers include ExxonMobil, Anadarko Petroleum Questar, FINA, Oxxy and Pioneer, Bank of America, Bank One, Bank of Oklahoma, Hibernia National
Edmondson
Petrolis president Curt Edmondson added "PetroXML is the leader in XML technology for the petroleum industry. Our joining forces will allow over 10,000 oil and gas operators to make payments electronically to over 4.5 million royalty owners." Edmondson is to join TransZap’s management team. More from www.transzap.com.
Halliburton has been somewhat slow out of the blocks in the e-commerce field – at least in terms of portal technology. E-commerce supremo Bob Peebler is moving to fix this state of affairs with a 15% stake in Petroleum Place (PP), a leading Acquisitions and Divestment (A&D) portal. Valued at $55 million the deal will let PP clients use Landmark software in the A&D process.
Lesar
Halliburton president Dave Lesar said "Property acquisition and divestiture often has inefficiencies in both cycle time and transaction pricing. We can reduce these with a new Internet-enabled business approach."
Peebler
Bob Peebler added "Through Petroleum Place’s ownership of The Oil & Gas Asset Clearinghouse and TradeBank, Petroleum Place has a head start in the marketplace over those who are attempting to build their markets from scratch."
Vickers
Gary Vickers, PP president commented "The alliance will allow us to leverage Halliburton’s global infrastructure of offices throughout the world to accelerate Petroleum Place’s international expansion."
Grand Basin
Landmark (and e-partner, SAIC) have two e-commerce based ‘Knowledge Service Provider’ (KSP) projects underway. PP is the KSP for acquisitions and divestments (A&D) while "Grand Basin" is a more general KSP offering for the upstream.
Norwegian software and service company Roxar generated earnings before tax of NOK 0.4.million for 2Q 2000 compared to a loss of 6.4 million for the same period in 1999. Total revenue for the quarter was 99 million NOK, against 104 million for the same period in 1999. The slight reduction in revenues reflects last year’s restructuring of the services business with reduced involvement in general consulting activity.
Software & Services
Software and Services turned profitable as sales picked up towards the end of the quarter, following a good reception of the RMS 6.0 suite. The margins for consulting services improved as a major part of these are now software-based. Roxar’s operating loss for the period was 400 thousand NOK compared to a 6.8 million loss for the same period in 1999, which included 7.3 million of merger costs.
UK-based consultancy Exprodat is "putting its money where its mouth is" by productizing two developments originally undertaken for Enterprise Oil. wOW is a Web Server for dynamic access to subsurface data over the Intranet, while the second product, Knowledge Documentor, is a spreadsheet-style knowledge capture tool for seismic applications.
Portal
A component of a corporate information portal, wOW enables users to browse OpenWorks, SeisWorks and Z-MAPPlus databases without the need to launch Landmark applications. wOW uses the Apache web server and Landmark’s API’s to generates web pages on-the-fly, for display in any web browser. Most data types can be searched, with results downloaded to Excel.
Browse
wOW currently can access most data types resident in OpenWorks, SeisWorks and ZMAPPlus. Users can search, browse and download detailed well, field, lease, map, document and seismic data. Images of surfaces and seismic sections can be displayed dynamically. Additionally, users can report errors in, and request loading of data. A ‘push’ profile can be set up to automatically notify users of changes, or to publish documents.
GIS
Integration with ESRI ArcView and ArcIMS for distributed spatial browsing is underway. The web browser interface requires little or no training – this improves accessibility and productivity, especially for those professionals unused to complex systems.
K-Documentor
Sister product Knowledge Documenter (KD) collects seismic project and interpretation metadata, and adds value and context. Captured knowledge is stored in the OpenWorks project database itself. KD tightly integrates with SeisWorks and OpenWorks so project documentation now forms an integral part of the project data store.
Enterprise
Speaking to PDM, Enterprise’s Ashley Dunbar confirmed the instant ‘killer app.’ status the products have acquired within Enterprise. wOW makes up the core of Enterprise’s "Rapid" corporate information portal. Dunbar told PDM "There is no learning curve for wOW. Non IT-savvy professionals can drill down to binary data in a totally intuitive manner. A click on the file brings "in your face data" with no use of vendor applications. Dunbar reckons that Rapid is "10 to 50 times faster than using the applications." Rapid/wOW is deployed at 6 sites worldwide within Enterprise and greatly eases data sharing between locations.
wOW?
PDM asked Exprodat director Bruce Rodney to explain the wOW moniker. Rodney described wOW as a "working title" and a reference to the product’s impact on end-users. PDM further understands that wOW could be taken as a reference to the Web and Landmark’s OpenWorks environment. More from www.exprodat.com .
Phillips Petroleum Co (PPCO)’s John Grismore revealed impressive new technology for automating the process of fault plane detection in a paper presented at the Calgary SEG. The Fault Plane Cube (FPCube) is described as a "highly automated and interactive fault interpretation process."
Credible
The software differs from other continuity based tools in that it searches specifically for non-vertical planar discontinuities. PDM attended the talk and was impressed by the credible positioning of faults in moderately complex terrains. Equally impressive was the man-machine interaction allowing for interpreter selection and alignment of auto-picked fault segments and export of finished work to vendor databases.
Patented
PPCO’s Fault Plane Cube (FPCube) uses a compute-intensive patented algorithm which involves calculating a proprietary "RB Factor". For each sample in the data, a correlation process determines the degree of planarity in the near vicinity of the sample by comparing local waveform shape and amplitude along small, offset planes at various dip azimuth combinations. After thresholding, the RB values are incorporated into the FPCube.
Grismore
Grismore told PDM "FPCube is the fruit of a four year internal research program within Phillips. FPCube is a mature product and has had plenty of ‘front line’ use. We have been talking to a number of software vendors regarding possible commercialization of the tool. It can also be hooked into Phillips’ own interpretation environment - the Seismitarium - where FP cube data is used in demonstrations."