Insight: Running E&P work flows through a web browser...

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Oil & gas IT could be much easier if all data and application functionality was on a centralised database and computing platform accessed via a web browser, instead of using multiple PC software tools. Dr Duncan Irving of Teradata asks if it can be done.

If the oil and gas industry was starting its IT from scratch, it would probably choose to do it like many other industries do it, with all data and software being accessed using web browsers, and all data running in a central database, says Duncan Irving, EMEA oil and gas industry consultant for data warehousing company Teradata, speaking at the Digital Energy Journal March 13^th Aberdeen conference, ‘Developments with subsurface data’.

No complex PC applications, no subsurface ‘projects’, just one large database which all the company’s subsurface, surface and sensor information was kept in, which people work directly with.

So geoscientists and engineers would never have to move data between systems and reformat it.

There wouldn’t be problems of multiple data in different places about the same field.

The database would be run according to standard computer science tenets of how to run a database, with long term stewardship, good data governance, and records of which people did what, at which time and with which version of the data.

“That would be a good place to be,” he said.

But the oil and gas industry, and technology itself, have a long way to go before something like this can work.

For the full version of this article, click on Digital Energy Journal

Printer / smartphone friendly version

Most Read News