At the PNEC conference two weeks ago, one of the sessions, “Information Management in Shale,” by Fred Kunzinger, senior principal, Noah Consulting, highlighted some interesting ideas about data management, and how presentation matters as much as the data itself.
The Shale industry is operating at unprecedented speeds. As a result, E&P companies are facing a strain on operations, and there is a “critical need for timely, accurate information.” And as drilling permits in the Eagle Ford alone have jumped from less than 500 to over 4500 from 2008 to 2012, most of these companies simply don’t have the infrastructure to support the timely land-holding, drilling, or completions data that is required to support an efficient business. As Kunzinger highlights, this means that, “Accounting, Procurement, Drilling, Land, Subsurface and Production systems need to be fully integrated.”
Kunzinger also mentioned a quote from Malcom Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point that highlights the fact that data management isn’t just about more data, but also about managing the data you already have better. What is needed is not, “an avalanche of new or additional information.” Instead, we must perform ” a subtle but significant change in presentation.”
To apply this to data management for oil and gas software, it’s important to develop an understanding of how the same data can be used or interpreted differently across the energy value chain. So before you throw more data at your employees, examine if the information they do have is useful to them right now. If not, examine why that is, and develop a plan for addressing this gap.
Kunzinger summed up by saying that successful Shale drilling, “depends upon efficient, integrated operations, which are dependent on readily available, integrated data.” In particular, this requires “advanced analytics to analyze and optimize the entire well lifecyle.”
For more on how data management can optimize efficiency in Shale drilling, see our post about using Lean concepts for the energy industry.