CALGARY, AB--(Marketwire - Oct 17, 2011) - An oil and gas industry event featured a key note address by the Mexican national oil company Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) and a software interoperability demonstration by eight Energistics member companies, all highlighting the powerful capabilities provided by WITSML, the open data exchange standard that makes it possible to seamlessly transfer data between the many technologies that must be used when drilling oil and gas wells. The ability to quickly and reliably transfer drilling data from one technology to the next improves the accuracy, safety, and efficiency of the complex, inherently risky, and capital-intensive drilling process.
The half-day event, which was hosted by Energistics and held at the BMO Centre at Calgary's Stampede Park, was attended by more than 70 people from 30 companies, including several Canadian oil and gas operators. The event followed a three-and-a-half-day meeting of the WITSML Special Interest Group (SIG), which holds in-person meetings twice per year in addition to its many virtual working meetings.
Energistics chief operating officer Jerry Hubbard kicked off the event welcoming everyone in the packed room and outlining the agenda. Next, WITSML SIG member Nick Whiteley representing BP provided an overview of WITSML, recent activities and updates -- including the recent release of WITSML version 1.4.1 and the new, more rigorous certification program being developed and planned for release in 2012 -- and the roadmap of future development plans. Whiteley also discussed how BP has been using WITSML since 2003, resulting in more robust solutions along their drilling and completions value chain, more flexibility in working with service companies/vendors, improved decision-making capabilities, and reduced costs for data handling.
The keynote address titled "How PEMEX Used the Open Standard WITSML to Reduce Well Costs and Improve Drilling Efficiencies" was delivered by Ing. Reginaldo Rodríguez Rosas, CCPTR Coordinator at PEMEX. Rodríguez described how, in 2010, the company standardized on WITSML for real-time drilling data in its Real-time Data Control Center for its South Division operations.
With this standardization on WITSML, PEMEX has realized an increase of drilling operative efficiency to 80% in 2011, which has made it possible to achieve the geological and mechanical objectives in 90% of cases. PEMEX has additional plans to further exploit WITSML, extending it to real-time monitoring of all of its operating rigs and using it to monitor specific problems, such as drill bit vibration, with an ultimate goal of increasing operative efficiency to 85% or higher. PEMEX is currently using WITSML to monitor 30 active wells, making it the largest WITSML user in the Americas.
The interoperability demonstration featured eight Energistics member companies showing WITSML in action and how it enables the flow of data from rig sensors to data stores where it can be used by many applications along the drilling workflow. Each of the participating companies uses WITSML to provide multiple products and services but featured just one for the demonstration, which included several types of WITSML servers and these applications: mud logging, geosteering, drilling optimization, rig state calculations, and daily drilling reports. Participating companies included: Geologix, Halliburton, IDS, Kongsberg, Pason, Petrolink, Schlumberger, and Wellstorm.
Following the demonstration, each company did a brief presentation highlighting its WITSML-enabled products and services. Sristy Technologies, University of Calgary, and TDE also presented on their WITSML capabilities.
Energistics would like to thank the event sponsors: Pason, Petrolink, and Schlumberger.
About WITSML
WITSML is an XML-based data exchange standard for data associated with drilling and completion of oil and gas wells and is currently used in more than 40 different software products. It was first developed in 2000 and is maintained by the WITSML Special Interest Group (SIG), made up of oil and gas industry professionals whose companies are members of Energistics. The latest version, WITSML 1.4.1, was released in September 2011.
Oil and gas drilling operations must use many sophisticated technologies, which include sensors, hardware and software tools to perform the many tasks required to plan, execute, and monitor wells. However, because these tools are developed by different companies, they often use different data formats and can't communicate with each other, similarly to the way Apple and Microsoft computers use different formats.
Data exchange standards provide a common format that all technologies implementing the standard can understand, so data can be saved and used directly by WITSML-enabled technologies.
About Energistics
Energistics is a global, not-for-profit consortium uniquely designed to unite upstream oil and natural gas industry professionals in a neutral and collaborative facilitation environment to develop and deploy open data exchange standards and to address exploration and production (E&P) information challenges. Membership consists of integrated, independent and national oil companies; oilfield service companies; hardware and software vendors; system integrators; regulatory agencies and the global standards user community. For more information, visit our website at www.energistics.org.
Contact Information:
ENERGISTICS CONTACT:
Jerry Hubbard
+1 (713) 294-4993