UPSTREAM SOFTWARE INTEGRATION GROUP GROWS

A nonprofit corporation designed to develop and deliver a computer software integration platform for upstream customers and suppliers has received expressions of response from 24 vendors.

The Petrotechnical Open Software Corp. (POSC), founded by five major U.S. oil companies in October 1990, plans to review presentations of common exploration/production data models in July.

POSC's technical staff will review the submissions, select the best models, and revamp and distribute the resulting integrated models.

POSC as of early May consisted of 13 members in addition to the five founding sponsors: BP Exploration Inc., Chevron Corp., Ste. National Elf Aquitaine, Mobil Oil Corp., and Texaco Inc. (OGJ, Dec. 24, 1990, p. 26).

The 14 members are ARCO Oil & Gas Co., Cie. Generale de Geophysique (Petrosystems), Cray Research Inc., Halliburton Co.'s Sierra Geophysics, Hewlett Packard Co., Institut Francais du Petrole, Landmark Graphics Corp., Oryx Energy Corp., Schlumberger Well Services Co., Ste. Francaise de Genie Logiciel, Western Atlas International Inc., and ZEH Graphics.

POSC hopes the platform will offer a worldwide standard way of facilitating the expansion of technical computing for the upstream oil business.

WHAT IS SOUGHT

The platform POSC seeks will be the interface between petrotechnical software applications, database management systems, workstations, and the users.

POSC's activities focus on development of an integrated E&P data model, a common look and feel user front end, and a set of test suites that enable developers to evaluate their offerings against selected industry standards.

The platform is designed to resolve:

Disparate data formats.
Different database systems.
Applications that have been developed in-house that do not communicate with other applications.
Diverse workstations that have specialized capabilities but have differing operational requirements and application interfaces.
The industry's desire to take advantage of new computing opportunities in a cost and time effective manager.

The same problems affect software and hardware vendors, who are faced with difficult economic tradeoffs of what languages, communications protocols, software, and hardware interfaces to develop/support.

HOW IT WILL WORK

POSC said oil companies are looking to the open systems environment to take advantage of emerging computer opportunities. The organization hopes the standard, open systems software integration platform will allow geologists and geophysicists to concentrate on exploring for and producing hydrocarbons, vendors and application developers to concentrate on application expertise, and computer makers quickly to expand their position in the oil and gas industry.

The underlying value of the open process is that it serves to ensure that the very best existing technologies are surfaced for consideration.

As a result, POSC will have the opportunity to incorporate into its offerings the collective wisdom of the oil and gas industry, hardware and software developers/vendors, the academic community, and standards organizations.

RELEASE GROUPS

The current offerings of POSC are to be licensed, distributed, and packaged as a set of releases to be delivered during 3 years.

The releases are grouped as follows:

Base standards--provide the E&P company with a definition of a base computing Application Environment Profile, including relevant open computing system and selected E&P data exchange and subroutine call standards.

E&P data model--provide the E&P industry with a conceptual and detailed logical data model.

Data access--will contain the Application Program interface for data access.

User interface--will contain the E&P User Interface Style Guide for multidiscipline and multivendor applications.

Development toolkit--will include an extended library of basic productivity tools that will aid the E&P applications developer.