The successful management of petroleum exploration and production data, building on over a decade of use of the industry standards developed by the PPDM Association, created by experts in Australia and world-wide, was the focus of a well attended PPDM data management meeting held in Perth on September 2nd. and 3rd.

Australian master data stores built on the PPDM model include the Woodside EpiDB database, which came on line in 1995, and the Petrosys dbMap product which has been evolving with PPDM since 1994, and is now in use at a wide range of sites across Australia, North America and Norway.

Quantifying the benefits of 12 years’ use of PPDM standards by Woodside Petroleum, Helene deBeer highlighted how good data management had contributed to keeping down the cost of knowledge transfer as staff moved between projects and business units. ‘Crew change is inevitable’, Helene said, ‘and having well documented data sets can dramatically reduce how long it takes to make the new team productive’.

‘Using the PPDM data model allows our clients’ data stores to track the evolving technical complexity of petroleum EP workflows’, Petrosys CEO Volker Hirsinger commented, expanding on a paper by Petrosys DBA Rob Bruinsma which described the evolution of the seismic model into PPDM’s current 3.8 release.

PPDM’s Steve Cooper gave a timely example of the need to keep up with business changes in his presentation of the PPDM project ‘What is a well?’, noting that ‘our experience with coal seam gas exploitation in Colorado is that it can involve the drilling of large numbers of laterals from pilot wells. There is a disparate range of nomenclature used by operators and regulators which our project sponsors have an urgent need to reconcile’.

Chevron information architect Chellie Hailes described Chevron’s PPDM based master data management strategy, which leverages on Chevron experience with PPDM going back to 1993. Chevron ‘wants to take control of their key EP information’, she says. The project addresses challenges associated with the merging of data and improvement of information flow across the range of vendor and in-house applications and data stores at Chevron sites around the world.

The meeting discussed a range of issues around the measurement of data availability and quality, with presentations on data quality metrics by CSIRO’s Allison Hortle, tools by DPI Victoria’s Bob Harms, and in the value of data catalogues by Fugro-Jason’s Tony Perry.

Keeping track with tape technology, which remains fundamental to Australia’s strong emphasis on seismic data, was part of the comparison of modern storage media that emerged out of talks by CGG Veritas’ Andy Cairns and Spectrum Data’s Peter Goyne.

PPDM CEO Trudy Curtis encouraged the 51 attendees, who represented 23 organisations, to play a more active role in developing standards with the not-for-profit PPDM Association. An Adelaide, Australia, PPDM working group meeting on the refinement of the data model for geochemistry, which is an important data type for coal seam gas research, is expected to provide just such an opportunity September 8 – 9, 2008.

“Standards based data management is fundamental to effective business strategies”, said Trudy Curtis. “The PPDM Association is committed to providing industry with opportunities to collaborate, share ideas, develop standards and promote best practices. Conferences and user group meetings are important vehicles to achieve success; the strong Australian data management community has shown that they agree.”

About PPDM
The PPDM association is a global, not-for-profit standards organization that works collaboratively with industry to create and publish data management standards for the resource industry. Through the PPDM association, world-wide petroleum data experts gather together in a collaborative, round-table approach to engineer business driven, pragmatic data management standards that will meet industry needs. PPDM Version 3.8 is an open, practical and usable standard that is supported by over 100 members.

For more information visit www.ppdm.org