Google Your Way to Maximimum Geoscientific Value

Although there is an exponential increase in data collection within oil and gas companies, access to the data for meaningful subsurface interpretation is constrained by the limited toolkits many geoscientists have at their disposal. We propose some methodologies and open-source software tools that can provide more efficient access to structured and unstructured data, thereby enabling geoscientists to make full use of this valuable resource.

Theory and/or Method

As we enter an age in which every aspect of our oilfield operations is measured, there has been a corresponding explosion in recorded data that is potentially available to the modern geoscientist. However, the multitude of generated data types and formats don’t often lend themselves to easy categorisation or access. Well logs, seismic data, XRD data, seismic observation reports, etc. can be stored or organised in various ways, depending on a vendor’s or client’s ever-changing standards. And while some data can be stored in a relational or object database, Blinston and Blondelle¹ estimate that 80% of geoscientific data is stored in a semistructured or unstructured form.

Typically, there are two methods in which data is stored and accessed. The majority of companies opt for manual curation, in which content is categorized “by hand” according to a certain set of principles. These principles may be rigourous if an organisation employs a comprehensive data management and database storage strategy, or it can be an ad hoc “democratic” process in which individuals place data in directories of their choice, with little oversight. Either approach, however, requires a lot of human intervention, and is fundamentally at the mercy of changes in company organisation and strategy.

The other method is similar to the approach that has made Google an omnipresent force in our daily lives. Access to the early internet was dominated by many companies who provided manually-curated lists of websites². However, this solution was superceded by Google’s search and indexing algorithms, which rendered those companies irrelevant and made searches for any topic trivially simple. As an analogue, we propose that an oil and gas company can deploy open-source tools such as Elasticsearch, which indexed terabytes of data, regardless of how it is structured or stored. These tools also allow indexing of document contents, including images or slide presentations, if open-source OCR (optical character recognition) solutions are also incorporated.

As a result, geoscientists can “google” their own datasets and retrieve lightning-fast results, instead of relying on manual or inefficient file-system searches. For example, a geoscientist can identify all play-specific presentations or formation-specific thin-section reports within seconds or minutes, instead of hours or days. If full data categorisation is desired, machine learning algorithms can be employed to automate the process1. While some technical knowledge is required for setup, the capability to learn and deploy these open-source tools is easily found online and well within the reach of any coding-competent geoscientist.

Examples

Cenovus began a file indexing initiative in early 2018, after many attempts to manually organise subsurface data, which failed due lack of resources or suitable data management solutions. In 2016, an attempt to categorize geoscientific data into a structured database has proven successful; however it is still an on-going process that requires a number of full-time staff to administer. The indexing initiative tackled shared network drives containing ~50TB of semi-sorted unstructured data, consisting of Excel documents, PDFs, images, LAS files, and PowerPoint presentations, among many other formats.

By allowing geoscientists access to the indexed data, searches are no longer exercises in missing results or frustration. The index can equally find a five-year old economic model from a long-gone exploitation engineer or a core analysis report embedded in a misnamed file. This indexing system has also proved to be a real time-saver in enhancing the structured database. Of course, indexes are blind to data-types, so the process can easily incorporate engineering or financial data in addition to geoscientific data. The initiative has proven so successful that it has been extended to other departments, including marketing.

Conclusions

The exponential increase in data collection is poised to revolutionize the way oil and gas companies operate. However, geoscientists shouldn’t have to rely on outdated tools and methodologies to fully unlock the value of this data. Modern indexing software can be employed to empower geoscientists to provide the best possible subsurface interpretations, based on all the available data.

Acknowledgements

• Tamer Salama and Sheldon Wall, Cenovus Data Science Group
• Jessica Galbraith, Sr. Decision Analyst, P. Geoph., Cenovus Energy
• Blair Halter and Steven Milbradt, Cenovus Geoscience Centre of Excellence
• Kirk Duval, P. Eng., Staff Reservoir Engineer, Cenovus Oil Sands Production