Data warehouse manages offshore project information

A data warehouse adopted from the POSC/Caesar data model will manage the life-cycle information for the offshore Norway Åsgard project.

The data warehouse is built on Intergraph Corp.'s Notia software.

According to CIMdata Inc.,1 the POSC/Caesar model is a collaborative project, combining information from two data models.

One model is from the nonprofit, joint-industry Petrotechnical Open Software Corp. (POSC). POSC was founded in 1990 to establish, maintain, and promote standards for sharing information in exploration and production.

The other model, Caesar offshore project, is a joint industry project for data standardization initiated in Norway in 1993.

Notia

Intergraph describes the Notia software as an internationally standard, STEP-compliant, data-neutral, platform-independent, client-server data repository. It stores and manages all facility life-cycle information and makes it available to users of technical and business systems.

Notia provides a mechanism for data exchange, sharing, and integration based on ISO (International Standards Organization) standards. These include the existing ISO 10303-AP221 standard for STEP data exchange and the emerging ISO15926 standard for data sharing.

The Notia data warehouse holds raw data from disparate sources internal and external to a company. The warehouse structures these data into information accessible by business systems, such as solutions from SAP, Baan, and Oracle.

Åsgard

Intergraph U.K. Ltd. tested Notia in 1997 for the $4.4 billion Åsgard Norwegian Sea oil and gas development project (Fig. 1 [74,609 bytes]). Åsgard lies in the Halten Bank area of the Norwegian Sea, about 120 miles offshore Norway.

Norway's Den norske stats oljeselskap AS (Statoil) operates Åsgard.

Åsgard oil production is expected to start in late 1998 through a 912-ft long floating production and storage vessel with a capacity for handling about 200,000 bo/d and storing about 900,000 bbl of oil. The Åsgard project comprises the Midgard (Blocks 6507/11 and 6407/2), Smorbukk (6506/11), and Smorbukk South (6506/11) fields, which lie in 780-985 ft of water.

The fields will be produced with subsea-completed wells.

A semisubmersible production facility will handle gas exports, scheduled to begin in 2000.

The project is expected to have a life of over 30 years.

Statoil estimates that recoverable reserves in the fields are 7.5 tcf of gas and 780 million bbl of oil.

Planned gas production is at a rate of 1.2 bcfd and 94 b/d of condensate.

Statoil projects that Notia will reduce the whole-life capital cost of the project by 10% and has reduced the time to first production.

Software components

Notia software components include:

The Intergraph asset and information management (AIM) product
The P/C PDM and P/C RDL models
A data mapping, translation, and import toolkit
The application programming interface (API)
Query and browser clients.

Intergraph describes AIM, with its object management framework (OMF) from metaphase technology, as the engine upon which Notia is based.

The P/C PDM defines the data terminology and structure. A dictionary of standard petrochemical data items, the P/C RDL, defines the various activities, materials, components, and relationships among these items.

The API allows users to develop additional functionality, and the toolkit provides resources for translating and mapping data from existing sources into a neutral format so that administrators can prepopulate the data warehouse.

A worldwide web browser client allows users to query the data warehouse and display results in a variety of configurable formats, including virtual data sheets.