Flare’s EPCat-Wellfile™

IM solutions - Information Management

EPCat-Wellfile™ has been developed to provide E&P professionals with an effective common access mechanism for publishing and retrieving well-related documents, data and knowledge. In common with other Flare E&P solutions, EPCat-Wellfile™ is based on the award-winning E&P Catalog™ platform and has been specifically designed to accommodate the hundreds of E&P
information product types typically found in a wellfile.

An effective Electronic Wellfile solution Although there have been many attempts to build electronic wellfile systems, the results have generally been unsatisfactory since different people have different views on what should be contained in the wellfile. More importantly, the hierarchical folder structures that are commonly adopted only reflect one person’s preference for how the information should be indexed, making publishing and retrieval by multiple users time-consuming, confusing and difficult.

By providing a consistent way to publish and access well information without requiring users to traverse a fixed folder structure, EPCat-Wellfile™ effectively solves the electronic wellfile problem. As well as providing a comprehensive master wellfile, the Catalog’s unique contextual attribution mechanism allows EPCat-Wellfile™ to support a variety of ‘virtual well files’ representing different discipline, functional or personal views from the same master wellfile.

Examples of virtual wellfiles include:

  • A drilling wellfile containing drilling and completions information for a well
  • An operations wellfile focused on production and maintenance information for the same well
  • A regulatory manager’s custom wellfile containing only the regulatory filings, permits and approvals for a particular set of wells
  • A package of well-related documents and data assembled as a ‘virtual data room’ supporting specific producing assets available for sale

Of course, authorised users can always access additional wellfile information if required, and new items published in any virtual wellfile will be immediately available in the master wellfile.

Solution Scope

EPCat-Wellfile™ is designed to accommodate a wide range of well-related items including:

  • Exploration – subsurface maps, reports, assessments, recommendations
  • Drilling – plans, permits, reports, diagrams, samples, logs
  • Engineering – designs, estimates, approvals, procedures, costs
  • Operations – measurements, performance, environmental, safety
  • Commercial – legal, regulatory, permits, obligations, correspondence

EPCat-Wellfile™ incorporates a subset of the E&P Catalog™ ontology, an intelligent, business-centric information structure that is continually being extended to accommodate new E&P product types. This allows additional items to be quickly added on request and company-specific or foreign-language aliases to be created if required. Well names are also handled to make it easy to find.

Functionality

  • Single Point of Access - Provides a single consistent interface to all key wellfile information regardless of the underlying source. Links with existing systems such as EDMSs, well databases, library tools, hardcopy files and physical stores (e.g. core samples)
  • Intuitive Interface - Allows users to make plain-language searches to find specific items or apply saved-searches to view individual and discipline-specific ‘virtual well files’, coupled with innovative and informative visualisations
  • Enhanced Publishing - Facilitates the publishing of wellfile information items together with the essential metadata needed to ensure they can be correctly identified and easily retrieved. Supports automated publishing from EPCat-WellTrackerTM
  • Contextual Searching – Helps people to find relevant well information using a ‘knowledgeable peer’

Business Benefits

  • A step-change in efficiency by reducing time spent searching for wellfile information
  • Personalised browsing and searching for information across multiple systems through a single interface
  • Improved cross-team, departmental and geographical sharing of well information
  • Facility to create custom individual and shared views (virtual wellfiles)
  • Allows users to add key remarks about information or processes to capture usage, quality or rationale, and add to the ‘story’ about the information

Integration

EPCat-Wellfile™ is based on the E&P Catalog™ and EPCat-Wave™ and is tightly integrated with other Flare applications, benefiting from the global to local deployment capabilities of the suite, the Flare Ontology, and the asset handling capabilities that make search discovery intuitive and easy.