WellMan: Database to Centralize all your Well's Information
Success in E&P operation lies behind right choices, which are often made through efficient use of data. However availability of data itself is not sufficient to guarantee favorable results. The secret lies in timely availability of data, the right kind of data and concisely presented data, which ultimately can be turned into meaningful information.
In terms of E&P industry, when we talk about well data, we are referring to the production data associated with well, well configuration, well history, well intervention details et cetera. There may easily be gigabytes of dataset available pertaining to just one well. All this information is worth millions of dollar and is used by engineers & professionals day in day out. Keeping this information organized, easily accessible & centrally available is the need of the day.
The industry is saturated with database software, such as Schlumberger’s Oilfield Manager. These software do a pretty good task as handling production data, however lack in integrating other well data such as logs, depth structure maps, intervention reports etc. This is the idea behind creating Wells Manager, or WellMan for short. Let’s look initially at what data can be stored in WellMan and then we’ll see how WellMan can provide an edge in retrieving & using that data in specific scenarios during day-to-day work:
Well Basic Details, Open-hole/cased-hole logs, Depth structure maps, Production data, workover reports, rigless intervention reports, artificial lift reports, et cetera.
The software will not upload all this data (which may create extreme duplications & cause data security problems), however will smartly index (automatically or manually) the location of this data set to be made available in the hour of need. For certain dataset (like service provider’s evaluation report), WellMan will just act as file locator & viewer.
Another prime feature of this database technology is hopper creations. In most E&P operating companies, any new technology or opportunity for CAPEX or OPEX progression is maintained through a “hopper” or table, which lists all the possible candidates for that specific objective (for e.g a list of wells that can be good candidates for hydraulic fracs). Opportunities are progressed through this hopper by methods of prioritization, high-grading or screening criteria. Speaking from personal experience, this is the single most data-intensive exercise, as one well is part of multiple hoppers for multiple technologies, for e.g Well-1 is listed in the hopper for plunger lift, hydraulic frac & perforation addition. Now if data for Well-1 is updated, you have to update multiple hoppers to keep everything update.
Screenshot of Hopper Navigation in WellMan
As WellMan centralizes the dataset for each well in one location, this problem is solved when the update is made in one master table or hopper, which we may call the master hopper. Every other table, hopper, list etc. for any technology or opportunity will be created from this master hopper and will be updated automatically. The minute master hopper is updated, that specific update is made throughout the organization. This workflow has the potential to increase our work efficiency many folds, reduce errors & completely eliminate work duplication.
This blog series will talk about the steps of developing WellMan and objective of each iteration of the software. We will discuss under-the-hood working of database development and overall how an idea is taken forward, polished with every iteration and turned into a final product. So stay tuned!
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