A leaner industry is continuing to look for ways to improve oilfield data management practices. In the last few years, Ryder Scott has increasingly received more digital information and fewer boxes of paper records and maps. Last year, clients began furnishing entire relational databases to Ryder Scott.

Those digital data were transferred as backup tape copies of such databases as OpenWorks, a Landmark Graphics Corp. program, and GeoFrame, a similar software from GeoQuest. In those forms, all types of oilfield data are stored in tables that are readable by the related suite of earth science and engineering applications at Ryder Scott.

Restoring a copy of the client’s database on Ryder Scott’s system eliminates costly, time-consuming preparation steps and facilitates interpretation work. This backup-tape procedure has somewhat eclipsed the older method of transferring digital data in separate files on diskettes and CD-ROMs. Although Ryder Scott typically receives digital data that way, to ready that information for analysis requires individual processing of well locations, log curves, directional surveys, stratigraphic picks and perforation depths.

Now, the consolidation of that data and other types of information into transferable, relational databases has streamlined the workflow and maximized efficiencies. At the conclusion of a project, the database is securely archived or returned to the client containing any new information or interpretation added by Ryder Scott.

"We foresee potential for considerable mutual benefit from the emerging information technologies in the petroleum industry," said Steve Phillips, a Ryder Scott geologist. "Clients planning to use us for ongoing evaluations are invited to provide copies of their digital databases. Not only would this accelerate the initial evaluation, but could greatly improve the turnaround for revisions due to new wells, recompletions or seismic surveys."

The content, format and media of digital data delivered by clients are highly variable. "Effective coordination of the digital information flow is, therefore, more and more critical to the speed and quality of a field study," said Phillips. "Opportunities for lower costs and more accurate reservoir definition increase when both parties communicate early in a project regarding the availability and structure of computerized information."

This time, during a brief phone discussion, the client logged on to a workstation, produced a graphic-image file of the map and e-mailed the compressed-format image to Ryder Scott. Moments later the map was in the Ryder Scott workstation system, hundreds of miles from the client, and rolling off a 36-in color plotter.

The inevitability of more frequent, larger online data transfers prompted Ryder Scott to establish an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site to speed up the upload and download of reservoir and economic data over the Internet. (See "FTP site facilitates data transmission for clients" in December–February 1999 Reservoir Solutions, Page 7.)

Although not an online transfer, digital data on tape recently facilitated an evaluation by Ryder Scott geologist Steve Golas. He recently returned from overseas carrying hundreds of map images on 8-mm tape cassettes, instead of lugging a thick roll of expensive paper. Golas then previewed the maps on a workstation and only plotted them when paper copies were required.

Most projects begin with an emphasis on the geological and geophysical attributes of a field or reservoir. However, from the onset, earth-science work must also incorporate knowledge about wellbore design, completion and production characteristics. Likewise, engineering work depends on the quality subsurface definition of a reservoir.