
UK Releases 130 Terabytes of Oil and Gas Data - infodocket
https://www.spe.org/en/jpt/jpt-article-detail/?art=5282
======
shiftpgdn
I work/consult for a seismic processing company. 130TB is a drop in the
proverbial bucket. Our small shop has multiple petabytes of data in
surveys/well bore logs.

If you were looking to modernize an industry O&G is super fit for disruption.
There are really only two major players who have awful legacy software. We
spent $300k last year to aquire a single seat on a piece of software. We spent
another $200k on 2 seats for a year of another piece of software.

These applications are total garbage too.

~~~
hannob
> If you were looking to modernize an industry O&G is super fit for
> disruption.

The only way to "modernize" Oil and Gas that is compatible with a future for
the planet is to shut it down.

~~~
hhmc
Perhaps for the purposes of energy. There are mydriad petrochem products that
have no viable alternative.

~~~
mrob
No commercially viable alternative when the externalities aren't priced
correctly. But hydrocarbons are already made from coal:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process)

The same process can be used with biochar, or potentially carbon from some
future carbon capture method.

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Reason077
I'm totally in favour of open data, of course, but there are ethical issues
when the data is explicitly intended to promote "exploration activity on the
UK Continental Shelf, ultimately boosting recovery".

Potentially increased extraction of fossil fuels is incompatible with the UK's
climate obligations and not something that should be celebrated.

~~~
andy_ppp
Completely, I found out yesterday that oil and gas companies only pay a
fraction of the corporation tax that normal companies pay in the UK! We have
as a society very strange priorities or maybe the people who assume power are
just completely self interested.

~~~
tim333
There seem to be quite a lot of taxes on them eg

>This means that the marginal tax rate on PRT paying fields is now 81% (fields
not paying PRT pay a rate of 62%)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_Revenue_Tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_Revenue_Tax)

~~~
Reason077
The UK Petroleum Revenue Tax (PRT) was set to 0% on 1 January 2016, and even
before that only applied to fields established prior to 1993.

[https://www.gov.uk/guidance/oil-gas-and-mining-petroleum-
rev...](https://www.gov.uk/guidance/oil-gas-and-mining-petroleum-revenue-tax)

~~~
alexgmcm
Yeah, we could have had a sovereign wealth fund - instead we let the
corporations exploit our natural resources for free.

I guess the Empire finally colonised itself.

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ktpsns
In scientific computing, the number 130TB doesn't tell you much. The header
figure in the article
([https://www.spe.org/media/filer_public/e3/31/e331595a-7594-4...](https://www.spe.org/media/filer_public/e3/31/e331595a-7594-423f-81d8-b31b2d38bcb5/jpt_2019_3_uk_data_repository_hero.jpg))
could be made of 130TB volumetric geometry and scalar field data, (in this
case miserably) downsampled before rendering.

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piceas
The 2016 geophysical data summary and data package details (excel) has a nice
map that that gives a bit of context to the region and data. [1]

I just wanted to see some numbers or a nice pdf or two with a few seismic
plots; [2] and [3] delivered. Although I'm not so sure about the value of the
word clouds [4], the Relinquishment reports are concise with pretty plots.

[1] [https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centre/data-downloads-
and...](https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centre/data-downloads-and-
publications/seismic-data/)

[2] [https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centre/interactive-
maps-a...](https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centre/interactive-maps-and-
tools/)

[3] [https://data-
ogauthority.opendata.arcgis.com/pages/statistic...](https://data-
ogauthority.opendata.arcgis.com/pages/statistics)

[4] gas!
[https://itportal.ogauthority.co.uk/web_files/gis/images/Word...](https://itportal.ogauthority.co.uk/web_files/gis/images/WordClouds/whole_p1528.jpg)

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cybervegan
And it should all be left exactly where it is. Fossil fuels are killing our
people and our environment.

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stuaxo
The current government is super keen on getting fracking started.

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convivialdingo
A lot of data that’s probably already been thoroughly poured over.

If you’re searching for logs on a producing well it might be useful.

But, I somewhat doubt the seismic data has much value if they’re giving it
away for free.

~~~
doodlebugging
I have to disagree strongly. The seismic data is probably at least as valuable
as the well data. There is a reason that the acquisition contractors and other
data owners don't make regular releases of old, legacy data for the public
domain.

It really has an infinite shelf life due to the processor's ability to
periodically employ newer, faster algorithms on newer, faster hardware to
produce products that, though they frequently show only marginal differences,
are still marketable as new products or upgrades over old datasets.

Legacy data, due to the acquisition methods employed decades ago, cannot be
replicated today. You will not get a permit to acquire airgun data today using
the same energies they routinely used a few decades ago nor will you be able
to use a broadband source like dynamite offshore. It was routine back in the
60's and 70's. The bandwidth of data today is different. New source types and
improvements to old sources can help but the old data has tremendous value as
a calibration. The penetration of energy for imaging the deepest events in the
subsurface is so much better in old data due to the low frequency penetration
characteristics of old sources (higher energy sources).

If you look around for free or publicly available seismic data there really
isn't much and ten years ago there was almost none that was easy to find.
Industry groups hoping to help newcomers learn by processing raw field data
have always been beggars to the data holders. Licensing restrictions follow
data everywhere and a lot of it comes with tight constraints on how it can be
used and whether it can be published.

Most contractors hold tightly to their data because it doesn't matter how old
it is, you can always squeeze it through another processing flow and output a
brand new, improved product and offer that for sale to your existing and
prospective clients. Old surveys get new names, they are merged with new data
using match filters and cross-correlations and tied so that it is not possible
to tell where the old data coverage ended and the new data began.

I started processing almost 30 years ago. Some of the data we processed then
was already 20 years old. It served to help a client decide whether a new
survey would offer any value to their exploration efforts by contributing a
more detailed subsurface image. 2D was a great reconnaissance tool and still
is today. By reprocessing some 2D data a client can focus their 3D efforts on
proscpects where the potential for success are highest thus cutting their
costs and if you think cost cutting isn't a thing in the oil patch, seismic
data processing is a loss leader for the big contractors.

I did some 4D seismic processing which involves acquisition of new data using
the exact same parameters and processing flows as were used in the first
survey. New data is then compared to older data so that operators can see the
tell-tale changes in their reservoirs which indicate migration of fluids in
the subsurface during production or fluid invasion during waterfloods or CO2
floods.

Old data never dies nor does it lose its value. Like I mentioned above, new
data gets matched to old, old data gets matched to new. Any time a survey is
acquired for the first time in an unexplored area, that survey data becomes
the ground truth dataset. All future data will be compared to it for quality,
bandwitdh, signal to noise ratio, etc.

Geophysics, or seismic data processing, really is a "what do you want it to
look like" operation. Once you know the acquisition geometry then you can
determine everything you need to know to image the subsurface just by smashing
it through enough algorithms to filter out all the geology-related attributes
like formation velocities, amplitudes - especially anomalous amplitudes,
formation thicknesses and their depths below the surface or the seafloor,
fluid content, etc. It really is amazing what you can discover without once
touching a rock today. It goes so far beyond imaging subsurface structures. I
love this field of work.

I am pretty happy to see seismic data released for personal use. I will be
digging through this to see what I can find.

~~~
convivialdingo
You make some great points. Certainly it’s useful for lots of other cases - I
was just considering it from an E&P perspective.

They already have numerous surveys and lines throughout those areas.

My first job out of college I processed and archived several warehouses of
data going back to some of the very first analog signals recorded, TI’s first
digital tapes (named GSI at the time) and also digitized paper records from
the 1920s. Great first job that exposed me to massive data and algorithms!

~~~
doodlebugging
Thanks. I would've loved to work with that ancient data. I think one of the
biggest challenges as a processor is to understand all the information in the
observe reports and how it relates to handling things like field source and
receiver geometry, noise issues during acquisition, etc. I imagine that the
oldest stuff was treated like a science project with everything notable
recorded in detail for future reference. I know that by the 1960's field crews
had pretty standard notes they would take. Later in the 70's, as activity
picked up before the big bust in 81-82 things became almost sloppy so that it
took a lot more effort to figure out what actually happened during
acquisition.

I worked on field crews back then and one of our observers would fill out his
paperwork the night before while he had a few beers and smoked all kinds of
things. Then the next day he would just make quick notes if something ended up
different. Too bad that when wasn't diligent at modifying his pre-written
reports. The prevailing belief on the field crews was that someone would
figure it all out in processing later so if they didn't get it right during
acquisition we could always fix it. Some of the best projects I worked on as a
processor involved unraveling the chains of errors in documentation to improve
imaging of old surveys.

------
kaennar
Interesting that this follows the Equinor release last June. We've been
working on analyzing the Volve Reservoir data, but the data ingestion is
getting very difficult because of the non-standard documents and data types in
the repository. Should be interesting to see if the UK's data will be the
same.

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justinjlynn
So, does anyone have a torrent for mirroring? I can't find anything but a less
than useful Web UI and mostly derivative datasets/alternative formats.

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dev_north_east
Anyone have any links to help me understand the terms, how they actually
gather seismic data etc. I'm interested and would like to learn.

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Komodoro
This make generate of a lot of controversy and even deploy more wars.

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HenryBemis
> infrastructure data

That bit scared me a bit. It is not always known where those massive pipes are
through the land. I hope they did leave out the details that would pose
security threat/information that can be used in a sabotage.

~~~
haser_au
Security through obscurity should be long dead by now. If the only thing
stopping people from damaging these assets is their 'secret' location, we have
a big problem.

~~~
dantheman
This is completely incorrect. Things can be made so difficult that they become
impractical by forcing the bad actor to do a lot of grunt work.

~~~
maxerickson
Not finding significant pipelines. That's pretty easy if you want to do it.

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rambojazz
And the license is...?

~~~
ilsorhei
I see the data is published under the Open Government Licence

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lifeisstillgood
I know this is not the time or place but Brexit is having some unusual side
effects - while the entire political and advisory class of government is
distracted for three years, a number of "I am surprised _that_ got through"
things have been happening - moves towards fighting tax havens in the City,
and things like this ... just ... unusual

~~~
HenryBemis
While our politicians are finger-pointing to save their skins, progress (and
capitalism) doesn't stop, it matches on.

I was reading that Shell UK is making a change to the greener, which scares me
because big oil is NEVER green friendly unless they want something more
sinister.

~~~
reitzensteinm
Oil companies aren't evil, they just care about nothing but the bottom line.
Once that is served by moving to green energy, they'll simply shift over at
whatever speed makes the most business sense.

Unless it's a tiny PR stunt, R&D project or mandated by regulation, you should
instead take it as a sign that for the first time green energy in a free
market is competitive at scale in certain situations, even without accounting
for externalities. That's fantastic news.

~~~
ThomPete
Oil companies do not care more about their bottom line than wind or solar
does. The green lobby is just as strong if not stronger relative to its age.

Solar and wind are neither clean nor cheap, but they do have a lot of policial
backing.

I know it's not a popular thing to say here it's none the less true.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
When comparing wind or solar with oil or gas, in what sense is wind or solar
not cleaner than oil or gas?

~~~
ThomPete
i am not comparing them as such i am saying that they arent as green as people
think.

To actually produce them is one thing, they require huge areas of land to
produce, they are unreliable meaningb they still need oil and gas and coal for
when they dont work, solar uses rare earth metals, they can only be used for
one thing and they currently only produce around 1% of our needs. They are
great as supporting sources of energy but they arent actually solutions to our
fundamental energy needs. And they arent as cheap as claimed since production,
installation and decommissioning normally isnt factored into the cost when you
see comparisons.

The greentech industry is every bit as bottomline focused as the oil industry
and it is so with an inferior product mostly pushed through by political
lobbying not on market terms.

