Industry Dives into UK’s New Oil and Gas Data Hub

Abstract

Publication by the UK Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) of 130 terabytes of the country’s oil and gas data has captured the imaginations of the upstream industry both domestically and abroad. Launched 20 February, OGA’s National Data Repository (NDR) started off with 100 industry users and has since grown to 1,270 along with another 1,760 public users. Data consumers have signed up from 94 countries, with around half of active users from outside the UK. In April, users downloaded some 97,540 well data files, 1,913 2D seismic files, and 559 3D seismic files. In the right hands, the dataset is intended to provide insight into the evolution and future potential of exploration and production (E&P) on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) through interpretation of public well, geophysical, field, and infrastructure data—spanning from the birth of the North Sea as a petroleum province to the present. At least one operator is already taking the opportunity to use the database to search for prospective acreage. The NDR “adds momentum to Talon Petroleum’s push into the North Sea,” said Matthew Worner, director at West Perth, Australia-based Talon, as he took to Twitter following the repository’s unveiling. The company’s purchase this year of “specialist UK explorer” EnCounter Oil has it “well positioned to use the data from this release to identify exploration targets in future licensing rounds,” he said. Worner’s comments are an encouraging sign for the OGA, whose purpose for the release is to help renew interest in exploration and development and stimulate innovation on the UKCS, said Nic Granger, director of corporate at the OGA. “In terms of who we’re targeting, we’re looking to encourage inward investment into the UKCS,” she told JPT. Important, Granger noted, is that the data are “being opened up for the first time to organizations that aren’t operators,” namely those involved in the supply chain and technology innovators experimenting with machine learning and artificial intelligence. The OGA is further promoting collaboration on technology development with the May launch of its UKCS technology portal. It allows operators to share lessons learned on technology deployment and facilitates engagement with the supply chain and tech firms to address development opportunities. Data-Sharing Emphasis Information sharing—namely data sharing—is one of the OGA’s top priorities. Since it was established in 2015, the OGA has made available seismic data, digital well logs, geological mapping, and various kinds of reports from the field. The regulator has a portfolio of prospects that goes back decades thanks to early data-collection efforts by the British Geological Survey, said Nick Richardson, head of exploration and new ventures at the OGA, during a recent exploration-focused OGA podcast. “We’re going to try and make as much of that information as openly accessible as possible so that companies can look at it and derive new insights,” he said.