Streamlining subsurface data management with S&P Global EDM for Energy, the OSDU Data Platform, and Esri ArcGIS

Background

Data management plays a crucial role in the energy industry due to its significant impact on the sector’s efficiency, sustainability, and competitiveness. Effective data management helps energy companies to make informed decisions, optimize operations, reduce costs, and improve environmental performance. However, one of the common data management challenges in the energy industry is effectively managing subsurface data and its geospatial attributes across multiple applications. These applications are often difficult to integrate with and don’t follow common standards.

The OSDU Data Platform helps to overcome these challenges. It was created to reduce data silos, liberate data from applications, and democratize data usage across the energy value chain. The OSDU Data Platform helps energy companies to integrate diverse types of subsurface data, including seismic, well, reservoir, and production data, from various sources and in different formats. This integration streamlines data access and analysis, facilitating better decision-making. However, getting the most value out of the OSDU Data Platform requires an enterprise approach to data management.

Subsurface data

S&P Global Enterprise Data Management for Energy (EDM for Energy) is a data management solution tailored for the energy industry. It helps companies in the energy sector to effectively collect, organize, and analyze data. EDM for Energy facilitates bidirectional integration with the OSDU Data Platform using configurable, off-the-shelf plug-ins for common subsurface applications — like Kingdom, Petra, Petrel, Solo Cloud, and others — to blend, master, compare, prioritize, govern, move, expose, and improve the quality of data with support for common geo data types, like well headers, directional surveys, formation tops, logs, geochemical analysis, and more. Today, most energy industry data management solutions focus on “normal” relational database sources, like production and accounting systems. These work well but don’t effectively accommodate geo data types because they are voluminous, applications are challenging to integrate with, formats are unstandardized, multiple copies of data are required to manage interpreted and raw data, and data is often inherited through acquisitions — all of which are reasons why the OSDU Data Platform was created in the first place. EDM for Energy helps geo departments take a more enterprise approach to managing their data to verify that their OSDU data lakes don’t become data swamps. EDM for Energy supports doing all of this at the application, project, and even authorship level. Figure 1 shows a conceptual before and after view of using EDM for Energy in the enterprise data management reconciliation and sync solution.

Figure 1. EDM for Energy solution for enterprise data management

Figure 2 illustrates an example where EDM for Energy shows the well header data from multiple data sources in your enterprise environment and allows you to choose which of those data sources is the master. You can pick and choose the different fields and related geo data types and their respective sources of truth, edit them, validate the business rules, and accept the master copy of your overall enterprise data. Once the data is reconciled and adheres to your organization’s business rules, it is then ready to be used across your enterprise. The data needs to be simply accessible to a variety of applications, with minimal application integration, which is where the OSDU Data Platform comes in. EDM for Energy has a built-in bidirectional connector to OSDU Data Platform, which greatly simplifies managing your OSDU data lake and unlocking it for new business workflows.

Figure 2. Building a well master data with EDM for Energy

OSDU Data Platform

The OSDU Data Platform is an industry-standard data platform designed to revolutionize the way data is managed and shared in the energy sector, particularly in the oil and gas industry. It is a collaborative initiative aimed at providing a common, open-source foundation for the exploration, production, and development of subsurface resources.

After the data is mastered with EDM for Energy and ingested into the OSDU Data Platform, it is then made accessible and discoverable and can be integrated with a broad set of applications with ease. The OSDU Data Platform is designed to scale with the growing volume of data generated in the energy industry. This scalability is essential as companies deal with increasing data from sensors, IoT devices, increased resolution seismic, and other data sources. By using a common data platform, energy companies can reduce duplication of effort and resources in data management, enhancing operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The OSDU Data Platform promotes innovation by providing a foundation for data analytics, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Energy companies can use advanced analytics to optimize operations, explore new resources, and make data-driven decisions. The OSDU Data Platform is important for energy customers because it provides a standardized, open, and efficient way to manage and share subsurface data. It enhances data integration, quality, security, and collaboration, leading to more informed decision-making and cost savings in the energy sector.

Geospatial analytics and visualization

Maps are critical to subsurface workflows. Maps provide a visual representation of subsurface data, helping professionals to understand and analyze complex geological and geophysical information. They facilitate spatial analysis, helping professionals identify patterns, trends, and relationships between different subsurface features.

Maps also play a crucial role in planning and decision-making because they help professionals identify suitable locations for drilling, assess potential risks, plan surface development, and optimize resource allocation. Additionally, maps serve as a common language for communication among subsurface professionals, facilitating the sharing of information and collaboration.

The data stored in the OSDU Data Platform and improved by the EDM for Energy toolset are important data types that not only serve subsurface professionals but also are used throughout the energy value chain. Verifying that the geospatial representation of this master data is easily accessible to all departments across the organization is a key driver for the OSDU Geospatial Consumption Zone (GCZ) team. The OSDU GCZ team uses OSDU consumption zone architecture to provide map-ready services of OSDU-managed information.

OSDU consumption zones are logical partitions or containers within the OSDU Data Platform where specific groups of users can interact with data that is fine-tuned for specific data consumption–focused workflows. In the OSDU GCZ, data from the OSDU Data Platform is preprocessed for geospatial visualization and analytics and made accessible as enterprise geospatial data products through standard map service APIs for easy integration with geographic information systems (GIS), such as Esri ArcGIS, or any client application that can consume map services.

OSDU GCZ data can be visualized, spatially analyzed, and used to build insightful maps with little to no coding, giving you more time to spend on data analysis and gaining valuable insights for your business. Using tools like Esri ArcGIS Experience Builder, anyone can configure focused and interactive web applications and dashboards that use geospatial data products live from the OSDU Data Platform.

This approach makes it simple to integrate your live OSDU geospatial layers with other geospatial layers in the client application, which may be coming from your corporate GIS, regulatory agencies, or other partner organizations. Figure 3 demonstrates how the data from the OSDU Data Platform, shown through the OSDU GCZ, can be consumed in Esri ArcGIS Experience Builder and the user experience enhanced with additional data from ArcGIS Online, state agencies, partners, and other sources.

Figure 3. Esri ArcGIS Experience Builder with the OSDU Data Platform and Esri ArcGIS Online data layers

This overall workflow showcases how enterprises can approach data management challenges using the modern tools and solutions in the energy domain and can view and take advantage of data in a new way. With these solutions, companies can spend more time on data analysis and consumption rather than on data cleansing or application integration. Another advantage of these technologies is that they use the cloud and can be accessed and scaled on demand based on the organization’s needs.

Value of the cloud

EDM for Energy, the OSDU Data Platform implementation on Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Esri ArcGIS Experience Builder are all powered by the secure and reliable AWS Cloud infrastructure. The robust set of AWS Cloud services support both the storage and compute requirements of the above workflows in a flexible, cost-effective, and scalable manner. The global footprint of the AWS Cloud facilitates compatibility between the solution and global assets and streamlines compliance with data residency regulations.

The scalability and elasticity of the underlying cloud services helps to accommodate the data and the workloads of virtually any size. In addition, it unlocks the data for the new workflows, including ML and AI.

Conclusions

Managing subsurface data is an involved process in any organization, but the tools and processes are rapidly evolving to overcome data management challenges in the energy industry despite increasing complexity and the ever-growing amount of data. Mastering the disparate data sources using EDM for Energy builds trust in your enterprise datasets. The OSDU Data Platform then seamlessly integrates these datasets with a variety of applications and tools, and OSDU GCZ further unlocks the data for rich geospatial analytics applications and workflows. With this data, you can build maps and applications with little to no coding. These new technologies and seamless integration options free up time for you to focus on gaining valuable insights.