According to Tarek Shahawy, Technology Manager with Oracle’s Middle East division, companies face the problem of complex legacy ‘silo’ applications that are hard to adapt and maintain and which often duplicate functionality. This is compounded with diverse asset teams and IT ‘spaghetti’ complexity—to the extent that IT ‘can’t answer simple questions’.
BPM
Oracle is therefore proposing a new approach to business process management (BPM), leveraging an ‘enterprise service bus’ (ESB). Connections to E&P applications leverage the OASIS-backed business process execution language (BEPL), a layer on top of the W3C’s web services description language (WSDL) to make calls from the BPM system.
Data Hub
All this is built into an ‘E&P Asset Data Hub’ offering connectivity to SCADA systems, operations, maintenance, SAP financials, custom developments, HSE and E&P applications. The idea is to have a ‘single source of the truth’ and to leverage BPEL to automate business processes. Typically, these would include process control alarms, engineering data, and possible geology, drilling and workover activity.
Process Designer
Oracle’s BPEL Process Designer is used to build dashboards of real time KPIs, analytics, forecasts, alerts etc. Data flows in from sensors to the Oracle Sensor Edge Server and through to applications. Assets can ‘call home’ for help. For instance, if a sensor’s temperature is over 200° for more than 5 minutes, an automated work order might be created. Operator intervention can be verified and spare parts reordered automatically. Oracle 11i, Retek and Oracle Fusion middleware also ran.
Skeptics
In the Q&A following Shahawy’s talk, one skeptic questioned whether this ‘idealistic vision’ could overcome the many barriers to process automation. Shahawy acknowledged that the technology is only part of the equation. ‘You need the need database and connectors to synch with applications. But we also provide validation and filtering tools which embed Oracle Consulting’s best practices.’
Vendors
Another question concerned the potential challenge that Oracle’s E&P Asset Data Hub represents to the major E&P application vendors. Shahawy pointed out that the latest manifestations of Landmark and Schlumberger’s applications tend to offer web services interfaces. ‘This makes our life much easier.’ Elsewhere, ‘Clients should ask vendors to implement web services to ease integration with Oracle back office tools.’
Silence
Oil IT Journal made several requests to Oracle for more on the Hub, with so far, no replies. Is the E&P Asset Data Hub real? Or another Project Synergy, Oracle’s earlier attempt to solve the E&P interoperability problem? (Oil ITJ Vol. 4 N°2).
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