I do not think a drilling rig derrick hand thinks twice about adding another 30 ft of pipe to the drillstring and not having the two ends of the pipe fit together snuggly. Even a robotic pipe-handling system depends on the physical pipe standard. Yes, there is a standard for that. There is a standard called API 5L that helps drilling companies buy the right kind of pipe to align with the drilling plan for the well. But what about the data manager who is trying to load a new logging curve into their petrophysics database. Will the curve names match their internal naming standard? Maybe, maybe not. What are the benefits of standardization? Here are some thoughts. - Improves clarity—because a standard process will eliminate the need for guesswork or individual interpretation. - Guarantees quality—because work is done in a predefined, optimized way. - Promotes productivity—because users will not need to comb documentation to get answers. We have been talking about data standards in the oil and gas industry at least as far back as 1988 when a group of petroleum industry players and data experts joined forces and in 1991 created the Public Petroleum Data Model Association, now called the PPDM Association. They recognized the need for petroleum data standards and have produced some good products, but our data manager still has problems. I was lucky enough (there is some sarcasm in that phrase) to work with a group of data standards organizations which about 10 years ago tried to get together and find the areas where they could collaborate on what you would think to be simple problems like a common way to name wells, to name well log curves, to have standard for units of measure … and the list goes on and on. But that was harder than you think. There were about a dozen standards groups interested in this collaboration including Energistics (formerly the Petrochemical Open Standards Consortium), PODS (Pipeline Open Data Standard Association), POSC Caesar Association (interoperability between systems and players in the process and energy industry), and MIMOSA (operations and maintenance). The oil and gas industry does not lack standards; in fact, it probably has too many of them which leads to the real problem that most operators, service companies, and tech companies just don’t implement the data standards that apply. If that happened in the pipe-manufacturing business, a company would go out of business. But in our business, it is called innovation. Strange, somehow, why it has happened that way. Corporations have worked hard at building a top-down alignment with strategic goals and objectives. The field superintendent and lease operator should be able to see their actions reflected in the corporate annual performance report to shareholders, but can they see their activities reflected in the corporate sustainability reports?
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