Frank Hartley • Houston
Teamwork expected to speed decisions
Exploration and production companies are now putting more focus on collaborative asset teamwork to speed and improve the decision-making involved with developing oil and gas fields. To facilitate such collaboration, companies are adopting shared, integrated information technology to enable multi-disciplinary teams to improve workflow processes across all phases of the oil field life cycle. Much of the data needed to feed these workflow processes can be shared between service companies and E&P companies during the planning and execution phases of the wellbore construction process. For this to become viable, a new data exchange standard needed to be defined and adopted by the oil and gas industry.
P.J. McGinley, director of Software Engi-neering at Baker Hughes INTEQ, says that the industry needs a new data definition standard that will allow the efficient transfer of large data sets.
The Wellsite information transfer standard markup language (WITSML) project seeks an improved oil industry standard to enable the service company on a wellsite to seamlessly exchange data with the software system in an oil company's office.
"Wellsite information transfer standard markup language (WITSML) was initially developed by an oil industry initiative sponsored by BP and Statoil, and later by Shell, as a new standard for drilling information transfer," Alan Doniger, Petrotechnical Open Standards Consortium Inc. (POSC) chief technology officer, says.
Initial participation was from the major service companies Baker Hughes, GeoQuest, Halliburton, Landmark, and Schlumberger. As of the completion of WITSML V1.2 in March 2003, POSC has custody of WITSML and is managing its support and future evolution through the WITSML Special Interest Group. The aim of the WITSML standard is for the "right time" seamless flow of well site data between operators and service companies to speed and enhance decision-making.
According to Eugene Nathan, Baker Hughes INTEQ product line manager for surface systems, over the past 20 years, a number of industry-wide solutions for transfer of information between service companies and E&P companies have been devel- oped, some more successful than others. The WITSML initiative was started in 2000 to update the existing methods for the 21st Century and incorporate the lessons learned from previous initiatives. Both E&P opera-tors and oilfield service companies, aimed at providing an industry-wide solution for transfer of information between service companies and E&P companies, sponsor it.
"During the wellbore construction process, a number of different service companies provide data monitoring and acquisition services at the wellsite, collecting engineering data, geological data, daily reporting data, and well log data from logging-while-drilling (LWD)/ measurement-while-drilling (MWD) tools," Nathan says. Oil company project groups have a need to analyze this data in a timely fashion using a variety of different processing software, running on PC Windows and Unix computers in widely distributed network environments.
Alan Doniger says that the scope of the first phase of the WITSML project was to cover the requirements of wellbore construction processes, focusing initially on the drilling process. Later phases may include completions, well servicing, well testing, and well production monitoring. The standard covers both the definition of standard data items and the interfaces for access to the data items. WITSML is intended for the transfer of data in both real-time and non-real-time modes. The cooperation between the operators and service companies working on this project has been tremendous and a key element for its ultimate success.
The first phase of the WITSML design was restricted to a small team from the major service companies. It had an aggressive schedule, and it was believed that the only way to meet this schedule was to keep the group small. For the same reason, the scope was restricted to drilling, as that was deemed to be the highest priority.
Additional work has been done to refine and implement the standard in the second half of 2001 and 2002. The application programming interface was fully implemented and commercial applications have been written and field-tested using the standard.
The overall scope of the project is to define standard transfer formats for data that covers the life of the well. Phase 1 focuses on the wellbore construction processes, specifically on drilling. Data that has been defined and placed into standard XML schemas for Phase 1 included bottom hole assembly ops, wellbore-tubulars and wellbore geometry, location-casing scheme, open hole, units-fluids report, logs-rig (equipment, pump, bit record), real-time mud logging, trajectory cement job, and target operations report.
Phase 2 and later potential phases will include completions, well servicing, well testing, and well production monitoring. The standard covers both the definition of standard data transfer formats and also the interfaces for access to the data formats.
One of the most obvious benefits that WITSML brings to operators is the real-time feed of WITSML data into the operator's project databases. Operators benefit because they get their data much quicker (near real-time) and they can get it from multiple vendors without integrating service company proprietary technology into their chosen software solutions.
The North Sea and Gulf of Mexico have seen significant activity is this regard with WITSML. BP, Statoil, Shell, and several other operators are already using or testing the technology for real-time decision-making in these regions.
Another somewhat prevalent use has been the request for WITSML time-based drilling data servers. Technology now exists that provides the "black-box" capability to store and publish this information to other WITSML subscribers.
As the industry views the success of this initiative, other disciplines are considering the use of similar technology employed through WITSML (XML, SOAP) to increase their productivity and real time decision-making capabilities. Some strong examples include the interest in moving the production discipline into a similar environment and using time-based WITSML data for engineering calculations on a more-or-less real-time basis.
