A critique of the November 2024 OSDU member meeting
BP: OSDU and the energy transition. Halliburton unpicks ‘confusing space’ of multiple implementations. Shell on certifying Venus-compliant software. SLB on the ‘very sophisticated and complex platform’. EPAM: ‘why is it taking so long?’ No more ‘hope-based’ commercial model!
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The Digital Twin revisited
Oil IT Journal editor stumbles across ‘data assimilation’, a group of methodologies that the weather forecasting community uses for rapid update of forecasting models. In other words, just what a ‘digital twin’ might need. But it appears that the ‘assimilation’ and ‘twin’ communities live in parallel worlds. Oil IT Journal investigates with help from assimilation guru Geir Evensen from Norway’s NORCE research organization.
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The future of Oil IT Journal
Editor Neil McNaughton reflects on the state of publishing and the role that Oil IT Journal has played over the years, providing curated content and skipping the advertorials. Looking to the future he proposes an action plan to expand coverage and ‘ownership’, with the constitution of an editorial board, ‘official’ DOIs and a move to quarterly publication.
Writing in the Journal of Petroleum Technology, SPE president Olivier Houzé took a ‘cold look at the quality of SPE publications’.
Houzé was inspired by one disillusioned member who opined that
‘The quality of SPE papers is going down the drain. … however bad a
paper is, it will find an event to be accepted and make it to
OnePetro’. Houzé is concerned that poor paper quality ‘could
affect the value and impact of SPE’s generative AI deliverables’. While
a human reader can filter out poor quality, the LLM is likely to
assimilate the good and the not so good, all of which will be retrieved
by future users.
A recent publication from the US Academy of Sciences highlighted another issue, the ‘The misalignment of incentives in academic publishing.’
While the original purpose of academic journals was to disseminate
scientific research. …. ‘this goal has become entangled with serving
the academic prestige economy’. This encourages scientists to publish
‘in ways that maximize their metrics’ which in turn leads scientists to
‘prioritize novelty and sensationalize findings with the hope of
publishing in prestigious journals’. PNAS also takes a swipe at
‘commercial publishing companies’ that leverage both knowledge
dissemination and academic recognition to ‘generate huge profits in the
process’. Commercial publishing companies’ profit margins can approach
those of big tech companies such as Google and Apple!
Which leads me to the following thoughts regarding the future of Oil
IT Journal, which has been published since 1996, almost 30 years.
During that period we have, I think, avoided some of the above problems
with publication quality (by our constant battle with marketing
puffery) and misaligned incentives (there are none, all material is at
our discretion).
But, as most of you know, Oil IT Journal it is largely the work of
its editor and publisher, Neil McNaughton (myself). As I am of a
‘certain age’, it behooves me to think about the future of our
publication. My main concern is to transform Oil IT Journal from a
periodical written by myself to something more permanent that can carry
on with less, or even no involvement from me. This leads me to the
following thoughts…
I am looking for interested parties to act as an editorial board
to advise on future direction and content for the publication. If you
are interested, please write me with your thoughts.
I want to share the writing load more broadly and will in future
be looking for input in the form of editorials and articles from our
readers.
It has been a while since we surveyed our readership to see what
articles and topics are key and what are not so important. We will be
soliciting input from our readers (subscribers and otherwise) to fine
tune and refocus our coverage.
For some time we have had a space on the website for original
papers that allow for a longer form than that offered by the Journal.
The current archive can be accessed here.
Oil IT Journal has now been accepted into the publishing community of Crossref.
Oil IT Journal now has its own DOI which means that there is a
significant interest in publishing with us in that your work will be
monitored, indexed and visible to the world wide research community.
Papers and suitable articles are now integrated with the Crossref
network. See for instance this recent editorial https://doi.org/10.69894/857213.
To cover future possible evolution of the status of Oil IT
Journal and its associated published papers we have set up (currently
squatted) a ‘.org’ website viz https://oilit.org.
Publication interval and pricing. Our current six issues per year
publication schedule leaves us little time for these activities. We are
therefore moving to a quarterly publication schedule, four issues per
year. Our coverage will remain as complete as ever, hopefully with a
renewed focus on what our readers want to read.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on all of the above. Email me at info@oilit.com.
Book review: Machine Learning Methods in Geoscience
New book from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists covers a lot of ground. From the history of machine learning, to its potential to best ‘teams of geoscientists’ with ‘magical’ ease. A mathematical background is completed with examples in Matlab and Python. Applications covered include fault picking, seismic inversion, potential field methods and finite-difference modeling of 3D data. Theoretical basis for ML success remains elusive but a ‘shut up and compute’ approach is accelerating.
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OSDU update
New Forum Chair. Microsoft on Venus/Community Implementation. OSDU ‘liaison’ agreements – Global Mining Group, PPDM, Blockchain4Energy and more. Elsevier publishes NNTU OSDU puffery.
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AI in Energy and elsewhere …
TotalEnergies joins Coalition for Environmentally Sustainable AI. Microsoft AI agents for everything. SAP deploys Amazon Nova GenAI. SEI releases Portend ‘guardrails’ for ML. OMG on the symbiotic relationship between AI and the Cloud. Aveva simulators on Nvidia Raptor DRL. Jetson Orin Nano dev kit for hands-on AI.
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Folks, facts, orgs …
Bridger Photonics. Cognite. EnerGeo Alliance. Energy Domain. ExxonMobil. Fiber Optic Sensing Association. GD Energy Products. GRI. Hexagon. OFS Portal. Opportune LLP. PIDX. PPDM Association. Pipeline Research Council. Servomex. Shell. The Open Group. Teledyne GFD. XBRL Europe. The future of ‘geoenergy’. New Drillbotics calendar.
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Done deals
Databricks ‘Series J’ round. Flowco IPO closes. Hexagon buys CAD, Septentrio. Innovex completes Downhole Well Solutions acquisition. Luna Innovations delists from Nasdaq. PakEnergy acquires Petrosight. RealWear bags Almer Tech. SLB acquires INT. Quorum Software closes whopping ‘unitranche’ private deal
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Cyber Security Round-up
SecurityScorecard report on US energy company cybersecurity. Software Engineering Institute releases Security Engineering Framework. OPC Foundation releases ‘priority’ cyber security considerations for owner operators. Splunk’s finds CISOs ‘pressured’ not to reveal breaches. OSI cable protection service. NIST Guide to Information Security.
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The Night Watch
DNV’s annual industrial cybersecurity gathering hears from DDG on mitigating AI-generated fakes. Modat on the (risky) intersection of safety systems and cybersecurity. TU Delft on AI, cyber resilience and the control room of the future.
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Sales, partnerships, deployments …
ABL to Pertamina. AIQ, Adnoc team on EnergyAI. Idemitsu Kosan implements Cognite Data Fusion. Halliburton ‘Octiv’ for Coterra. Endress+Hauser teams with SICK. E2Companies, Nabors - e-power for the oilfield. Eliis extends collaboration with Chevron. Emerson’s ‘ASCO’ e-dump valves for Laramie Energy. Expro to develop clamp-on flowmeter for Petrobras. U Copenhagen deploys Geoteric AI. Kodiak Robo Trucks for Atlas Energy Solutions. Omnira now global distributor of PDQ Decisions. US DoE grant to Pioneer and Diversified for stripper well emissions. Saipem and Aveva develop AI-based solutions for energy. Septentrio adds Geodnet GNSS correction services to partner program. TotalEnergies selects IFS Cloud EAM. PDO awards Viridien contract. Qatar Energy orders Vissim’s vessel monitoring and alerting system.
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Petwin – semantics for all!
Brazilian researchers to link W3C semantic sensor network ontology with the OBO Foundry’s informational artifacts ontology. Oil and gas testbed leverages ThingsBoard IOT/Scada.
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Standards stuff
USPI keeps FL3D moniker. Industrial Digital Twin Association and Federtec exchange competencies. New IOGP Reports - user guides to enviro data collection, 4D seismic surveys. ISO framework for ESG implementation. China’s Standardization Administration publishes ‘Part 100’, a guide to ISO 15926. Open Group announces certification protocol for OPAF/SOSA. 150th anniversary of the Convention of the Meter.
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CII, the Construction Industry Institute and next generation project delivery
Shell’s perspectives on Advance Work Package Implementation. Are we AWP mature?
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Process and plant industry IT news
Toyo’s EPC Hub: a data integration platform for plant construction. USPI on ‘year of turmoil’ in process industries and the ‘high number’ of standardization bodies. And here is another, ‘ICxA’, the Industrial Commissioning Association.
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AI locates undocumented US oil and gas wells
Working under the US Catalog program, Berkely Lab researchers train convolutional neural net on historical US topo maps to locate century-old orphaned wells.
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IEA Global Conference on Energy and AI
International Energy Agency announces ‘Age of Electricity’ (we beg to differ). More energy needed to allow AI to reduce energy needs! We test drive new IEA ChatGPT for Energy.
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