Trusted Data as a Company Asset

Abstract

Digital Oil Field's (DOF) practice's original promise was to gather data to help make better technical and business decisions. Some argue that a required step to enable a shift in the adoption of the DOF methodology is to treat data as an asset. Meaning data as an asset is as valuable as a physical asset. It should be maintained, protected, and respected in its own way with the same diligence we have for a field. Here we are presenting why data is an asset. With the advent of analytics, thanks to complex correlations “data can talk”; for it to be meaningful, data needs to be up to date, validated, and standardized so everyone can have access to a single version of the truth. Data is accepted and trusted if the process by which it has been validated is viewable and auditable. Enhancement and manipulations of this data need to be shared and stored centrally, not locally. The logic applied for its manipulation needs to be documented as well. Trusted data means that each member of the team trusts each other's methodology to transform data into information. An enabler is the generation of meta-data to encapsulate this logic with the shared output. Such fresh approaches to data validation and sharing will generate significant savings by eliminating duplicate efforts, increasing access time to information, and confidence in using the latest available source of information. Ensuring this seamless access to information requires identifying where the sources of data are and developing aggregators to make it accessible to all in a standard manner from a single point. Creating this bridge to scattered data from multiple sources over many vendors is a complex task requiring domain expertise from a very heterogeneous set of people… It requires data ownership identification and bridging inconsistencies in data types and quality. From the capture of data points and its validation to its refining and by-products, “Data as an asset” requires custodians of the integrity of the data, its storage and accessibility. “Data as an asset” means data is valuable and therefore needs to be protected from being misused or stolen. The fact we now “drink from the source” of data (getting data almost directly from the sensors) means we have to secure its acquisition and transmission very thoroughly and properly manage entitlement. “Data as an asset” and the corollary technical data management it implies, will contribute to maximizing production and reserves; while also reducing costs by applying efficiencies, and connecting the field to the back office.