J.P. Johnson
Texaco Inc.
Houston
One of the biggest challenges in today's exploration and production industry is the development of unconnected islands of software and data.
Geophysicists experience the challenge as their activities, among the industry's most intensive generators of computer data, increasingly occur in conjunction with those of other petrophysical disciplines.
In late 1990, Texaco, Mobil, Elf Aquitaine, Chevron, and British Petroleum formed Petrotechnical Open Software Corp. (POSC) to answer this challenge by establishing industry standards and a common set of rules for applications and data systems within the industry.
In view of the rapidly growing role of computers and data exchanges in the E&P business as well as companies' strong support of this effort, geophysicists can expect POSC to become a major factor in their work. This article will review POSC's mission, development, and plans.
NEED FOR STANDARDS
The need for uniform industry standards confronts oil companies every day.
For example, more oil companies are moving to the integrated approach to problem solving. This usually involves geologists, geophysicists, engineers, and others coming together as a work team.
An immediate problem with this approach is the incompatibility of the software and data sets from the different disciplines. Programs have their own data input and processing schemes unique to a particular discipline.
Moreover, databases usually do not communicate with each other, and generally the same data elements are named differently in the various databases.
POSC is working to solve these problems by developing an industry-wide data model that will have unique names for entries and be consistent across disciplines.
Development and adoption of this common industry data model will be a critical component in the reduction of software development costs.
POSC's technical objective is to provide a common set of specifications to implementers of E&P technical computing systems that will allow data to flow smoothly between products from different organizations and will allow users to move smoothly from one application to another.
POSC is an important component in Texaco's long range computing strategy because it provides the framework around which applications and data can be integrated into systems that will serve as the company's future E&P computing foundation.
It is becoming increasingly important for Texaco to be able to purchase generic software, where applicable, and to use its in-house software personnel to work on those projects that will give the company a competitive advantage.
BACKGROUND
Since the introduction of digital technology into the E&P sector, most oil companies have developed their own software.
Companies believed they could obtain a competitive advantage by developing "better" proprietary software. Each company has its own databases and software systems, so there is usually no cost-effective way to incorporate vendor software into existing and incompatible systems.
Consequently, in some cases the cost of "gluing together" data sets and applications is two to three times the costs of the commercial software. In other cases, vendor software must be modified to make it compatible with the user's existing system, thereby creating costly maintenance problems.
Thus the stage was set for POSC to facilitate the lowering of software development costs by standardizing software specifications, thereby permitting the interchange of software from different vendors, much as American Petroleum Institute specifications for pipe threads permit the interchange of various pipe products (Fig. 1).
POSC is a vendor-neutral, international, nonprofit corporation with 58 member companies, including representatives from hardware and software companies, government, E&P service companies, E&P industry associations, and major oil companies.
From the beginning it was recognized that POSC must be an international organization with strong technical input from all segments of the worldwide E&P industry (Fig. 2, Table 1).
Much of the original software developed by U.S. based companies turned out to be wholly inadequate when applied to other areas of the globe with different measurement systems and geopolitical definitions.
Forty-five percent of POSC membership is non-U.S. based. BP and Elf have taken strong leadership roles in POSC in technical and administrative areas.
In June 1992 a POSC office was opened in London. This location will further assist with international input to the overall standardizing effort.
POSC'S OPEN PROCESS
POSC is staffed by "loaned" personnel from member organizations and by full-time employees.
In all projects, POSC requests information from its members and industry regarding business needs, designs, technology, and solutions. All suggestions are seriously considered, comments are sought, and technology is selected and tested. The selected technology provides the specifications from which software will be developed.
As indicated in its name, POSC is committed to the open systems approach.
The often heard concepts of interoperability, portability, scalability, and compatibility are strongly endorsed by POSC and serve as the basis for its technical strategy. This strategy gives the members a closer vision of the future as they develop their own software plans.
Most computer organizations are driven by hardware and software vendors; e.g., Open Software Foundations (OSF). POSC is fundamentally end-user driven.
As a result, POSC is being closely watched by groups in other industries to see if this type of approach is successful.
The ultimate benefactor from POSC's offering will be the E&P professional, using the computer to more accurately and quickly solve technical problems.
Special interest groups comprising POSC members work with the POSC staff to define the technical content of the POSC program. POSC promotes consensus of the membership by having the members participate in the processes.
It is very important that the processes remain open and neutral.
The POSC staff makes the final selection of all technologies submitted. POSC's crucial role is to act as a decision maker, thus establishing or endorsing a standard (or norm) that members can use.
STANDARDS, DATA STORE
The first version of POSC's Base Computer Standards (BCS) endorsements was published in November 1991. Copies are available from POSC.
It consists of a 20 page brochure that identifies vendor-neutral standards in seven areas. The benefits of each of these endorsements and the reasons why POSC chose them are also spelled out.
The two most important selection criteria deal with the need for vendor-neutral standards and the need for scalable technology that could span the spectrum from the smallest desktop systems to the largest supercomputers.
The data store is a repository of technical data shared by many people and by many application programs. E&P companies want to be able to purchase and install applications from a number of different vendors and then have their own data made conveniently available to all of the applications.
POSC's role is to develop an applications programming interface that will be workable on customers' data stores, regardless of differences in each store's data.
The application interfaces will be the same at customer's sites, so vendors will be able to deliver a single, lower cost version of each application to the entire E&P market and customers will get applications that have direct access to their own data.
E&P DATA MODEL
The E&P data model defines the way in which the application programming interface presents the data in the POSC data store of the applications (Fig. 3).
The first draft of POSC's E&P data model was distributed to POSC members at the end of January 1992. The model will undergo substantial modification during 1992 before the first general release is made available in the first quarter of 1993.
More than 4,000 E&P technical data items are defined in the draft model. Collectively they cover the full scope of E&P technical data.
Categories include cartography, drilling, earth model, E&P management, facilities, geology, geophysics, operations, production, reservoir, wells, remote sensing, and others.
In this effort, POSC's goal is to simplify the movement of data from one application to another, across conventional discipline boundaries.
For example, POSC technology will make it easier for a seismic interpreter's results to be used as a starting point for a reservoir engineer's simulation run.
GUIDE, DATA EXCHANGE
Early drafts of the user interface style guide have been written. Several member companies have been developing similar guides, which will be made available to POSC for an integrated effort.
POSC's style guide builds upon the OSF/Motif Style Guide, which covers basic issues of controlling menu selections, scroll bars, etc.
The Motif style guide does not address how to manipulate E&P graphical objects; this is the main thrust of POSC's effort.
POSC is working with several industry organizations defining standard formats.
One such organization is the Society of Exploration Geophysicists. The SEG committee is focused on the definition of seismic data items, while POSC is looking at how those definitions will connect to the other areas of the E&P business.
POSC has fostered similar working relationships with API committees and several other industry organizations.
Nothing seems to change more rapidly these days than business and technology, so the specifications that POSC produces will need to evolve to keep pace with corresponding changes in business requirements and technology advances.
As soon as the initial versions of each of the specifications are published, POSC will begin working toward the publication of the next version.
The open process, used so successfully by POSC in developing the initial versions, will continue to play a central role in the evolution of its offerings.
Copyright 1992 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.