Energistics calls for national data standards

Stuart Robinson wants ‘simple standards’ for regulators and national data repositories.

In a recent publication from POSC/Energistics, Stuart Robinson, CIO of the UK’s oil and gas regulator, the Department of Trade and Industry, called for greater cooperation on standards for national data repositories and regulatory bodies. Robinson argues that regulators share many problems associated with reporting and data exchange.

Easily understood

On the other side of the equation, oil companies have to deal with multiple regulators and regulations across different oil provinces, leading to a demand for a low cost, easily understood set of standards for reporting and data exchange.

Energistics

Energistics, of which Robinson is a director, have facilities on their new web site to facilitate and publicize developing and established standards. Initially, Energistics would sponsor and support this work from their current budget but expects that participating regulatory bodies would ultimately join up.

Outline of Proposal

The proposal is to agree a minimum set of data requirements which will form the basis of an open standard. Agreement will also be sought on a set of standard reference entities and an initial test data set. Robinson suggests that initial data sets could target daily drilling, production and well completion data.

XML

Working on the ‘keep it simple’ principle, Robinson suggests a simple paper-based description of exchange files together with detailed XML specifications such that vendors could deliver code. The aim is to a provide a set of ‘off the shelf’ procedures that define the common reporting requirements for any oil province. The work will leverage previous Energistics projects in the US, Norway and the UK.

Click here to comment on this article

Click here to view this article in context on a desktop

© Oil IT Journal - all rights reserved.