Are Geological and Geophysical Data of the Albertine Graben, Big Data? Are they Big in an Integrated Upstream Project?

Abstract

In spite of high pace of exploration activity in the Lake Albert basin, appraisal and field development become challenging in the Albertine Graben of Western Uganda. The volumes and variety of exploration data sources in these basins exist in different scales, sizes and formats in multiple dimensions (including periodic and geographic dimensions) and domains. Modelling and integrating such unstructured data need a new direction, in particular, the data structuring, storage and retrieval. We propose Big Data tools since the data in terabyte scale in multiple domains are needed to bring them together in an upstream business. We aim at a holistic information system development, simulating Petroleum Digital Ecosystem (PDE) and Petroleum Management Information System (PMIS) articulations with data modelling, data warehousing and mining, visualization and interpretation artefacts. This approach facilitates the data management not only in the Albertine Graben but from basins of Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi in the western arm of the East African Rift System (EARS). We evaluate Big Data, exploring the connectivity among multiple oil and gas fields and their associated petroleum systems, providing new insights on data integration and management, adding values to data analytics and exploration projects in the Albertine Graben context.