Reducing Costs and Promoting Activity on the UKCS through the DEAL Data Registry and the National Hydrocarbons Data Archive

The DEAL Data Registry builds upon the success of DEAL (http://www.ukdeal.co.uk), launched in 2000 as a PILOT initiative (www.pilottaskforce.co.uk) and widely regarded as an indispensable tool for new licence applicants. The DEAL Data Registry is managed by CDA Limited, a subsidiary of the UK Offshore Operators' Association (UKOOA), and is operated by the BGS. By the end of 2004, the DEAL Data Registry will offer a comprehensive catalogue of well, seismic and other important data, linking users to more than ten million items of geoscience data. The National Hydrocarbon Data Archive (NHDA) is part of the National Geoscience Data Centre located at BGS's headquarters at Nottingham and elsewhere. Working together, the DTI, UKOOA, CDA and the BGS are encouraging oil companies to deposit selected geoscientific data in the NHDA, relieving them of their current obligations to keep the data forever. Here Robert Gatliff (rwga@bgs.ac.uk), John McInnes (jlmc@bgs.ac.uk), Jackie Banner (jackie.banner@dti.gsi.gov.uk) and Malcolm Fleming (mfleming@cdal.com) from the PILOT data implementation team (PDIT) present an update on this initiative to reduce the storage/access costs and improve the availability of UKCS data. This article also appears in the October 2003 (Volume 22) issue of "First Break" published by EAGE. This is an update of a previous eNewsletter article on DEAL

Introduction

As part of the PILOT initiative to reduce costs and maximise accessibility to encourage further exploration and development in the UK , the Data Life Cycle Initiative has looked at problems of data. Efficient access to subsurface data is essential if the full value of the UKCS is to be realised and PILOT gave a working group, including volunteers representing all stakeholders - the DTI, UKOOA, the British Geological Survey, Common Data Access Limited (wholly-owned by UKOOA), consultants and service companies, remit to examine issues around all geoscience data gathered under Petroleum Licences ("Licence Data").

Today there are very large volumes of data dispersed between licensees, service companies and other bodies. These data are complex and found in a wide variety of media and formats, some of which are difficult to read and may even now be obsolete. There are also problems around duplication, with a significant but unknown amount of redundancy. The management of these data is very labour-intensive, time-consuming and difficult and therefore very costly to industry in general. Much of these data are not readily available to encourage new exploration.

It is extremely difficult to establish what data exist and inevitably, important data could be degrading or being lost. This situation acts as a barrier to new entrants to the UK who invariably find it difficult to obtain access to complete data sets for their responses to licence rounds and other acquisition opportunities. It is the new entrants who are leading the exploration push in the UKCS as the majors move on to less mature international basins.

The scale of development seen today on the UKCS was not envisaged at the outset almost forty years ago when only "hundreds of wells and a handful of fields" were expected. Neither today's data volumes nor there complexity were envisaged. Parliament intended that data be preserved for the benefit of science and industry after offshore activity had ceased. The obligation (embodied within the licence agreements) to keep data "forever" was not considered onerous at the time.

The PILOT Data Group worked throughout 2002 and a model has emerged (Figure 1) that recognises that data has a life cycle of creation, use, archive and (in some cases) destruction.

Figure 1: Simplified Data Life Cycle Model

The model proposes that Licence Data are held in data repositories during the active phase of there life from whence they pass to a National Archive at a recognised, qualifying event (for example on surrender of a licence or the cessation of field production). It is envisaged that licence holders may wish to archive a group of licences together, where for example, an area is no longer one of interest. There is still a risk with this model that some data may be permanently lost through takeovers, withdrawal from the UK or winding up of a company.

The main features of the proposed model are:

• A Central Data Registry of UKCS Licence Data to be created and maintained as part of the DEAL project;
• Active Licence Data to be held by operators across Networked Data Repositories in which data is shared (where this is economically feasible);
• The BGS to maintain the National Hydrocarbons Data Archive for a subset of licence data;
• Licensees to gain Relief from Obligations to keep licence data in perpetuity upon archiving data; and
• Guidelines for Redundant Data to be developed that allow Licensees to eliminate data thought to have no intrinsic value.

DEAL is a web-based service (Figure 2) designed to promote and facilitate access to data and information relevant to the exploration and production of hydrocarbons on the UKCS. It was launched in 2000 as a PILOT initiative, and is developed and managed by the British Geological Survey for Common Data Access Limited (CDA), which is funded by a group of UKOOA. Henceforth DEAL will be known as the DEAL Data Registry.

Figure 2: The DEAL web site

The DEAL Data Registry is now the definitive site for free access to a range of data, such as licence boundaries, new licence round information, fallow blocks, well headers, pipeline and other infrastructure data.. DEAL is part of the WONS (well operation & notification system) and when consent is given by DTI, the resulting well information is dynamically loaded to the DEAL database. During the recent Promote round of licensing, DEAL was a very effective and time-saving way of providing header information and locations for wells, 2D and 3D seismic data, and a set of contacts where potential licensees could acquire data. These include the release agents for basic well data and operators and "speculative" seismic companies for seismic data.

The launch of the DEAL Data Registry and the National Hydrocarbons Data Archive was announced by Stephen Timms, Energy Minister at Offshore Europe in Aberdeen at the beginning of September 2003 (http://www.og.dti.gov.uk/pilot/PDITPR.doc).

DEAL Data Registry

Under the proposed model, licence operators and the DTI's data release agents will be required to post data catalogues to the DEAL website. Catalogues will be associated with the appropriate feature on DEAL. Well logs, well reports and well cores for example, will be associated with a specific well; seismic navigation data, trace data and acquisition reports will be associated with a particular seismic survey.

The catalogue shown on DEAL for unreleased data will only be visible to its owner (generally the licence operator) and to other entitled parties (typically its licence and trade partners and DTI). The public will see only the catalogue for data that is available through release plus any other catalogue data that the owner specifically chooses to make visible to the public. Only DTI will have entitlement to view the full data catalogue.

The DEAL Data Registry also provides a powerful tool to enable Licence Groups to improve overall catalogue quality and to consolidate the underlying data between its license partners. It will also help to avoid the loss of data through poor indexing and ensure that companies comply with licence obligations.

The phasing and prioritisation of implementing the DEAL Data Registry will recognise that the majority of catalogues are incomplete and have various other quality problems. Licensees will have work (and therefore costs) to condition them sufficiently for use.

The benefits of the Data Registry are:

• Improved overall catalogue quality
• Consolidate the underlying data between licence partners
• Reduces duplication of data
• Avoids the loss of data through poor indexing
• Definitive "trusted" data sets
• Extendable to other areas
• Ensure that companies comply with licence obligations
• Make data more readily available
• Encourage new exploration

Licensees will have work (and therefore costs) to condition their catalogues sufficiently for use. Implementation plans will therefore demand less stringent standards for catalogues of legacy data than for point-forward data.

A DEAL Data Registry trial was completed earlier this year using well core catalogue data to test and refine the generic registry model. This demonstrated the feasibility of the underlying technology to meet the security, entitlements, data model and cataloguing issues, and evaluated the costs and benefits associated with the model. Core data and 2D seismic data are the first catalogues within the Deal Data Registry.

National Hydrocarbons Data Archive

The British Geological Survey operates the National Geoscience Data Centre as the national collection of geoscientific information. The BGS will extend its existing facilities to create the NHDA to accommodate the geoscientific legacy from UK offshore oil and gas exploration and production activity. The model includes options for licensees to transfer data to the NHDA at agreed events (for example at the time of licence relinquishment or at Cessation of Production). Provision of a defined set of data to the NHDA will earn licensees permanent relief from their obligation to manage and maintain these data in perpetuity in return for an "endowment" fee.

Although relief of obligation is granted for licences and licence data, the procedure will be flexible to allow partial relief of individual datasets that may be associated with more than one licence, such as regional seismic surveys, potential field data etc.

Data will be selected in conjunction with the operator to provide a record of exploration and development, such that future exploration and redevelopment activities, for hydrocarbons, CO2 sequestration, geothermal energy, or other geoscientific or commercial activities will be able to build on a summary of existing information.

UK legislation requires all licensees in the UKCS to store most data in perpetuity (excluding cores and cuttings), even after licence relinquishment or sale or trade. DTI can request copies of the data, which should be provided in a modern format, at anytime. Requests for data by DTI have been limited, but a greater number of requests to support the Promote campaign to increase exploration and development are predicted. Obligations are borne jointly and severally by all parties to a licence and not by the operator of that licence alone. The NHDA will take on the obligation and store a subset of data for the long-term benefit of the Nation.

The decision to archive is principally economic and would be taken collectively by all partners in a Licence Group. Once in the NHDA, data will be made available at low cost to the public, with a catalogue of data available through DEAL.

The decision to archive would be taken collectively by all partners in a Licence Group. The activities leading up to this decision would be:

• Evaluate and agree with DTI and the BGS which Licence Data are to be archived and which may be otherwise disposed of (employing also the guidelines for redundant Licence Data under development).
• Assess the cost to retrieve the data from current storage.
• Assess the effort and cost of any "conditioning" required for the Licence Data for it to comply with agreed standards and the cost of its transfer to the National Archive.
• Agree the archive endowment payment to be made to the National Archive by the Licence Group.
• Decide how to handle the balance of Licence Data not required for the National Archive and determine the associated costs (including data destruction, if appropriate).
• Complete the necessary legal formalities (including transfer of title and relief of appropriate licence obligations).

An initial National Archive trial based on data associated with Kerr McGee's Hutton Field (which ceased production in 2001) was completed as a benchmark from which to extrapolate a generic economic model for the National Archive. Further trials are now underway for ten licences from six of the major operators. The results of these trials and the details of refined procedures will be available in early 2004.

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