In today's ever-increasing cost-conscious business environment, Canadian oil and natural gas producers, along with the Alberta Ministry of Energy, Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (EUB), and the Canadian Department of Energy (DOE), have constructed an online data portal system that is expected to save its users a collective $12 million (Can.)/year.
The system, called the Petroleum Registry of Alberta (PRA), has "transformed an archaic, paper-based system" into a time and money-saving web-based space. The portal is now where more than 1,200 Canadian oil and gas producers, pipeline firms, and midstream processing companies as well as the DOE and the EUB convene "virtually" every day to exchange information regarding oil and gas production, royalties, fees, taxes, and oil and NGL shipping volumes.
Developed on Microsoft software and making use of the company's BizTalk Server 2000 and .NET Enterprise Servers, the registry creates cost savings through offering its stakeholders and industry a more efficient way of doing business by saving time, promoting fewer errors, and providing one central location to exchange information.
Potential growth
The registry, which has surpassed even its developers' expectations as far as its number of tracked users, was brought online "live and fully functional" in October 2002 but won't be "officially" launched until next month, Mark Dickey, PRA communications coordinator, told OGJ. "The reason we didn't go with a big splash right off the bat was because a previous project that we had was less than successful, so we had to take a very conservative approach in terms of how we publicized the registry," he said.
Fine-tuning of the system went on for about 6 months, recalled Dave Giles, director, project management, with Montreal-based Fujitsu Consulting (Canada) Inc., which worked with vendor partners to deliver and integrate the technology behind the registry. "We're almost to where we really want to be and where stakeholders want us to handle this operation," Giles said.
Dickey alluded to a previous attempt at implementing such a portal system. "Yes, it was tried before, but it was a completely government-driven exercise," he said. This new set-up is different for the fact that the governance is overseen by the ministry, DOE, EUB, and the industry as stakeholders, he explained. All of these groups have representation on the governance boards and the recommendation boards.
Even before being officially launched, the registry already has others vying to use its technology. Currently, Dickey said, British Columbia is interested in utilizing the registry as well as the Canadian federal government. The portal's developers have even had interest expressed from as far away as Nigeria, said Dickey.
Links between systems in different provinces of Canada are "possible," Giles explained, "but we also have different regimes and slightly different regulations between the provinces and maybe some inclination to split them off."
Resistance, security
Because of the past failed attempt to implement such a system, Dickey said that PRA had to slowly gain acceptance and trust from industry players. "Because of the former project, which changed its scope and wasn't quite ready to be implemented, there was a lot of resistance," he said. "Everyone had to work together, everyone had to agree to what was going on, and everyone had to have input to how it was to be built.
"Once industry believed that we were serious about having their input, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Small Explorers & Producers Association of Canada bought in," Dickey said. Resistance has eased further as of late, he noted, as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Production Accounting—which certifies public accountants in Canada—is using PRA's training courses as part of accountants' training. "You have to finish it all before you get your certificate," he said.
Following acceptance, Giles said, "the next big issue was security." Concerned about putting their data into a web-based environment, portal users wondered how secure their proprietary information would be, something that was solved only through "quite a bit of dialogue and time spent around the security model that we came up with to make sure that all partners were comfortable with the approaches that we were taking," he added.
Down the road, the registry is looking at a number of different enhancements, particularly with regard to other business functions.
"Seismic data is always one thing that's been punted around—that's a possibility," Giles said.
