An ambitious programme to develop a standard data platform for the oil and gas industry is nearing an important milestone as the Open Subsurface Data Universe (OSDU) Forum prepares a commercial release of the platform later this year or early 2021.

The initial product to emerge from the OSDU Forum, which has nearly 160 members — oil and gas operators, software developers, service companies and others — defines an industry-wide standard for subsurface exploration, development and wells data and delivers what OSDU says is the first open-source, cloud-based data platform of its type.

One chief objective is to break down the “data silos” that can result — even within a single company — when stored data is linked to different applications, says Johan Krebbers, a member of Shell's Digital Center of Excellence and leader of the OSDU management committee.

The use of different standards for data storage can make it difficult and time-consuming for scientists to integrate the data and make a decision, such as where to place a well, and to share information among those who need access such as engineers and designers, he says.

The initiative aims to put all exploration, development and wells data in a single platform and create an “ecosystem” where software development can flourish.

“The ecosystem is very important to us,” Krebbers says.

“It brings all the data together in a single data platform and offers a single API (application programming interface) for companies to start developing new software for this platform.

"And whoever runs the OSDU platform — whether it’s Shell or BP or Woodside or Gazprom — can run these applications, and we create a market out there for them to run these applications.”

OSDU says the common data platform with a standard API “will create an open, standards-based ecosystem in which suppliers compete with each other to provide the best applications and services”.

Reduce cost burden

The common platform will “reduce the resource and cost burden of independently designing and validating a subsurface data platform” and “influence and accelerate key reference components that will be the foundation of the upstream digital transformation,” OSDU says.

The consortium includes tech giants and cloud hosting vendors Microsoft, Google, Amazon and IBM along with dozens of operators, software and data suppliers, integrators, academic and research institutions, and some familiar names in the oilfield services sector, including Schlumberger, Baker Hughes and Halliburton.

The initiative has origins in Shell Exploration, which a few years ago set out to decouple its own subsurface data from legacy applications and build a searchable platform to drive better workflows.

The company soon recognised the mutual benefit of opening the effort up to a wider swath of the industry.

“We decided if we want it to be successful, we should make it an industry open-source solution, not just a Shell solution,” says Krebbers.

“A Shell solution alone would never create that market push that we need. So we spoke to several oil and gas companies and asked if they wanted to join — they all agreed they had the same issues to deal with.”

In September 2018, the group held a kick-off meeting in Houston with its first 10 members, organised as a forum of the Open Group global technology consortium.

Last year, Shell merged what Krebbers calls the "base of OSDU" with Schlumberger's open-source Delfi data platform and decided to make the OSDU platform similarly "open-source based".

Seismic data

This past May, the group rolled out OSDU Release 2, a developer-ready release that expanded functionality of an earlier release to include seismic data.

OSDU envisions a common standard for data storage but Krebbers emphasises that “every company will have its own implementation and will determine who has access to their data”.

He says: “What is important with OSDU is that they will all store that data in the same way, in the same format. Of course, the data is unique to Shell, unique to Total, unique to Equinor, unique to Gazprom. But how we store the data will be the same.”

In what is an industry first, he adds, “a well in BP will have the same definition as a well in Total, the same as ConocoPhillips, the same definition as Chevron or anybody else. Which is quite unique in the industry.”

The common platform is well suited for the exponentially greater amount of data being gathered in real time as digital technologies have taken hold in the oilfield.

It also suits the majors’ moves toward becoming integrated, or “hybrid” energy companies with significant renewable-energy portfolios, which also generate data, Krebbers says.

A version of the platform slated to be released next year, OSDU Release 3, will extend to upstream production, to bring “all data from wells to production into a single data platform”, he says, followed by releases that extend to renewable energy such as wind and solar.

“Our vision is that we go from a subsurface data platform to an energy data platform, and we are putting all the steps in place to make it happen,” Krebbers says.

Focus

Shell and partners ready new standard oil and gas data platform release