Urgent (March 1998)

The Urgent (User Reference Group for EmergentTechnologies!) project was presented to the world in the comfortable surroundings thatused to be the Whitbread Brewery in London's East End - PDM was there.

The URGENT project is fairly diverse and is rather hard to categorize. It sets out to "improve the work processes of the E&P Industry and to help the IT industry produce better software for E&P professionals". To achieve this, E&P work processes have been meticulously analyzed using Role Activity Diagrams modeled using Process Charter software from Scitor. Object oriented analysis techniques using Jacobson’s "Use Case" was also applied to the documentation of IT requirements.

Because the Urgent partners are seeking to commercialize the results of their achievements, not all the findings have been put into the public domain. The main conclusion made public was that we need a Shared Earth Model (SEM) so that all disciplines can refer to the same validated data set throughout the E&P lifecycle. Robin Getty from PDS described the SEM as "a collaboration mechanism, development and simulation environment and a repository for data and information". So you see we are on quite a high plane here. Getty further described the SEM as a "meeting place for the facilities engineer, reservoir engineer, production engineer, driller etc… to share information and agree critical areas to be evaluated by considering all aspects of the exploitation and development of the asset".

Another facet of Urgent - a Decision Support Environment (DES) - was described by Flemming Rolle of PARAS. Rolle described the DSE as providing a link to all models, accessible in real-time and providing information in an understandable form to the decision-maker. Commercial, facilities and Shared Earth models will be linked and visible in DES, making the DSE "the umbrella for decision-making". Judgement on the ultimate impact of the Urgent project results will have to await the publication of more findings. There was a generally high level of interest in having more information as to the findings of the BPR study - which apparently make up a 600 plus page report.