Optimising Subsurface Data Management: A Systematic Approach

Subsurface specialists need complete, high-quality, gold-standard datasets in order to make the best interpretations, which ultimately lead to business decisions. The plethora of data types, data sources, file systems, physical locations, and team structures make managing subsurface data in energy companies a complex challenge. Poor subsurface data management has resulted in interpretations being made that do not reflect all of the data or the best data. Furthermore, storage costs spiral due to data duplication, and companies suffer the consequences of regulatory infringement if they fail to meet the rules of national data repositories, such as the UK National Data Repository (UK NDR). This article outlines a systematic approach to increasing the value of subsurface data ecosystems. First the ecosystem is pro-grammatically assessed to find pain points such as duplication, lack of quality assurance and quality checking, or regulatory infringement. Next a rationalisation project is implemented to fix these issues. Finally, the newly streamlined subsurface data ecosystem is rigorously maintained through monitoring, ongoing reporting, and management. Four case studies are included to demonstrate the value that this approach has delivered to energy companies.