By: Dr Jagadish Chandra M, Sr. Manager / Sr. Consultant - Oil & Gas

The Oil & Gas Industry has undergone major transformation by leveraging new-age technologies from time-to-time. By using innovative methods of Exploration & Production for harmonizing with volatile crude prices, the industry has managed to thrive so far. The current outbreak of COVID-19 is a good example to explain oversupply vs underutilization of crude oil due to the global industrial shutdown.

The fluctuation in crude prices majorly depends on parameters like global crude demand, geo-political relations of countries, and OPEC’s decision on crude oil production. With a sharp decline in crude prices, most exploration activities have been temporarily shut down. This is an opportunity for Geoscientists and Data Analysts to utilize their time revisiting data for digitalization, standardization and quality improvement of data in existing interpretation systems.

These are the industry benefits for qualifying and standardizing data:

• Saving storage time and cost spent on document searching
• Documents are online and readily available globally for quick and need-based interpretation
• Standardized data is efficient to run Analytics for detailed study
• Unstructured data can be converted to structured, by leveraging various advanced processing techniques
• Structured and quality data can also be readily utilized by Geoscientists for speedy decision-making
• Standardized data can be stored in vendor-neutral formats for future re-interpretation purpose
• Standardized data repositories can act as a single store for searching across the entire BU or organization
• Qualified data in Interpretation software can ease the process of upgrades or migration of system of records from one software to other

Upstream v/s Downstream

In the Upstream area, about 90% of the data generated is unstructured, and only 20-30% of data is utilized for interpretation from the data generated is reused for re-interpretation, as the data is locked in unstructured and paper format. In Oil & Gas Industry, every data byte leads to the source of exploring Hydrocarbons. The industry carries historical data aging from 70-80 years in structural and un-structural formats. Upstream is the one of the industries that stated its data storage in terabytes. Now, due to adoption of latest technologies like Big data and Data Analytics, its exabytes and zettabytes.

Exploration activity is primarily dependent on crude oil prices. When crude oil prices are at upturn, Geoscientists will be chasing historic data as exploration activity is temporarily suspended. Most historic data is not organized, digitalized and standardized, as Geo Data Managers are preoccupied in addressing ongoing exploration support activities. When crude prices are on a decline, digitizing process helps in making data available online.

Since every byte can lead to the source of oil, it needs to be properly standardized for the future needs of the industry by utilizing crude price downturn time affectively.