The Business Problem

Professional Petroleum Data Management Association

What is a Well Phase II

Well Facets Explained

March 2010

The Business Problem[PMH1]

There are no accepted standards for well status and classification within the oil and gas industry. As a result there are literally thousands of different definitions being used with very little consistency in terms of terminology or semantic meaning. This results in significant communication problems between individuals, departments and organizations and it is a fact that this has an impact to the bottom line of a business.

There is also a lack of a standard industry wide symbol set for representing wells on a map. Companies, application providers, data vendors, and project teams all have unique processes and descriptors for classifying wells and for representing this classification graphically. This makes map based data sharing and analysis a difficult and risky proposition.[PMH2]

Solving the Problem

Following on from the success and positive feedback from PPDM members of WIAW Phase I, a charter was developed to address the challenges associated with well status and classification. Upon adoption of the charter, a workgroup was established with sponsorship and participation from across industry including operators, data and software vendors, government agencies and standards organizations.

[PMH3]

The scope of the initiative was defined to be:

1. Establish baseline definitions for well status and classification over the lifecycle of a well that can be used for communication and comparison purposes.
2. Establish a baseline symbol set that can be used to create a standard set of well symbols to be implemented within mapping applications across industry.

The workgroup team met via teleconference on a bi-weekly basis over a period of 6 months to develop the Alpha version of the deliverables. During the initial meetings it was quickly realized that what we refer to as well status and classification are essentially different ways of describing wells so that people can find the right well or set of wells for the purpose that they require.

These are facets. Each facet describes a single, atomic condition of the well. By combining information from many facets, users can group or identify wells for many key functions. The facets need to be:

• Based upon key business processes
• Associated with the baseline well component definitions (Phase I)
• Tied to the well lifecycle
• Clearly and precisely defined

For example, the Fluid Type facet describes the principal fluid in the well head stream such as oil, gas, water etc. Sub-facets or facet qualifiers then provide additional information about the fluid, such as oil composition, or abundance of gas.

Alpha Release

Facets, Values and Qualifiers

The Alpha release comprises of a total of 14 facets along with the associated values and qualifiers.

• Facets 1-8 relate to the business of owning a well.
• Facets 9-14 are specific to the information that describes the well.

The facets are all designed to be used independently but they may often be used together as co-facets. As examples, Business Interest & Operatorship are co-facets; Business Intention, Outcome, Lahee Class and Role are another set of co-facets.

Each facet has a set of unique values and every attempt has been made to ensure that values are not repeated between facets; thus, for example, we would know that a value of Gas belongs only to Fluid Type and is not used to describe a WellBore Status. It is expected that companies will add their own facets and values but it is strongly recommended that they don’t change the definition or meaning of the existing facets and value lists otherwise the benefit of the initiative is compromised.

To provide flexibility in the solution, we have introduced the concept of facet qualifiers that provide additional detail to facet values. Companies have the flexibility to define their own facet qualifiers, allowing for the definition of individual business processes and metrics /reporting requirements. An example of a qualifier would be for Fluid Type where we have defined qualifiers for the composition of a fluid and also for the abundance of a fluid.

Great care was taken to discuss and create the facets, definitions and values independently of the PPDM data model to ensure an unbiased design. Future initiatives will work to define how the facets can most effectively be implemented within the data model. The facet definitions are available through the PPDM web site accessed via the WIAW link where the associated values and qualifiers can be browsed or downloaded in an Excel spreadsheet.

Map Symbols

Once the facets had been established and the values defined, a logical way of creating a framework for map symbols was revealed. It was determined that the majority of map symbols in common use can be defined through a combination of Business Lifecycle Phase State (planning, drilling, producing etc) and Fluid Type (oil, gas, water etc) along with an abundance qualifier to indicate a show. A small number of symbols were included for special cases of wells that do not have an associated fluid type such as a dry hole or a service well.

The symbol set can be browsed on the WIAW web site and downloaded in TIF, EMF, and Adobe Illustrator formats.

[PMH1]Paul Haines comments.

[PMH2]This sentence is important and needs to be broken into several points.

[PMH3]I think you need more here. What is a facet? The title of this article is “Facets Explained” but they aren’t explained here. I think it would be good here to explain how we decided that facets would solve the business problem.

This seems to me to be a summary description of the work group and the results of the workgroup.