Open Spirit software ready for roll-out

Open Spirit E & P software [120,870 bytes]

The first petroleum industry software able to access a wide range of applications is expected to be commercially available this summer.

Open Spirit E&P Component Framework software is being developed and marketed by Prismtech Ltd., Gateshead, U.K., which has already made pre-release versions of the software available to the Open Spirit alliance.

Following issue of the pre-release software, which is functionally complete but not fully tested or documented, Prismtech aims to release on June 1 a "beta" version of Open Spirit to alliance members and other specially selected companies for operational testing.

The announcement of the release schedule follows the recent decision by two more geophysical software vendors, the Geoquest unit of Schlumberger Inc. and Petroleum Geo-Services ASA (PGS), Oslo, to join the alliance (OGJ, Feb. 15, 1999, p. 24).

Prismtech's role

Keith Steele, chief executive of Prismtech, told OGJ that the company was formed in 1992 after a management buy-out and is still mainly owned by its management team, but that Shell Oil Co. and computer systems integrator Logica plc, Leatherhead, U.K., are also minority equity holders.

Steele said it was decided early on that the company would focus on developing software based around emerging international and industry standards, and, in the oil and gas sector in particular, under the Petrotechnical Open Software Corp. (POSC) standard.

Prismtech implemented POSC's Epicentre standard in its suite of exploration and production data management products, which includes LightSIP, Epicentre Builder, and Epicentre Exchange Manager.

Prismtech also contributed to the development of POSC's new interoperability specification, and Open Spirit will be the first commercial implementation of this standard.

Data integration

Open Spirit will enable users to integrate their applications and access data in data stores produced by different vendors.

Steele said Open Spirit was designed to address business problems that all industry users face, with different vendors' applications being so poorly integrated that users have to write custom code to exchange data between applications.

"E&P applications are full-featured and expensive," said Steele. "If you buy an application, you get a monolithic structure with lots of stuff you don't need.

"Open Spirit provides a standardized interface to data stores. One of the biggest applications is data integration because it enables the exchange of data. Effectively, we're offering multivendor 'plug-and-play' technology."

One of the biggest problems with working with a variety of data sources is that, for some existing applications, the work flow has to be interrupted for time-consuming reformatting of data.

Two petroleum companies involved in the development of Open Spirit said that, out of the total work flow for a typical E&P earth modeling project, 40-60% of the time would typically be spent on reformatting.

Development

The Open Spirit project originally grew from internal Shell applications, Spirit and Spirit II, which were instigated to give easy access to a number of different E&P databases.

Shell generated interest among oil companies and vendors in a collaboration to produce an open industry-standard application platform, and this became the alliance.

The alliance appointed Prismtech as the development and marketing partner for Open Spirit, and at the same time Shell took a stake in Prismtech and seconded staff. To date, more than 45 person-years of effort has gone into the development of the software, with Prismtech providing about 80% of the funding.

Steele explained that Open Spirit is written in Java language, which allows cross-platform portability and Worldwide Web access. It also uses a standard interface definition language to provide application developers with access to data independently of the data store, location, or the implementation language of the data access technology.

He sees two main markets for Open Spirit E&P software: application end users, such as earth scientists and support staff; and application developers-in particular, E&P technology companies.

Another benefit of Open Spirit software is likely to come for petroleum companies: "It will enable them to get more value out of in-house systems developers, so any rush to divest in-house staff might be premature.

"With Open Spirit, operators would not become overdependent on suppliers, because it is vendor-neutral. Also, if operators don't retain in-house systems skills, how can they make decisions about the way ahead?"

Early use

Steele said Prismtech is expecting immediate orders of "substantial" size for Open Spirit E&P software. These are thought likely to be confirmed when the beta code version of the software is delivered.

So far, Open Spirit has entered a relatively small data domain, said Steele. The key challenge for the product's future is development into other areas, such as production and drilling.

The beta software will first be issued to the alliance members: Shell, Elf Aquitaine SA, Chevron Corp., Statoil AS, BG plc, CGG Petrosystems, Jason Geosystems, Shared Earth Technologies, de Groot-Bril Earth Sciences, Foster Findlay Associates, Petrotechnical Data Systems, Institut Fran?ais du P?trole, Schlumberger Geoquest, and PGS.

It will then be issued to the 46 companies that are members of the Open Spirit Special Interest Group, which includes other operators, computer equipment vendors, and E&P applications suppliers.