Over the past several years, one leading Oil and Gas company in town has risen to nationwide prominence in the industry after successful execution of its strategy. But following the success of several acquisitions is not always a clean, organized process; it can be messy. The seismic database of this business was a self-described “monkey on everyone’s back” that nobody wanted to deal with. Important meta-information for the seismic (including ownership) was located in several sources, most of which were separate from the seismic data itself.
As a result, the process of researching the necessary information for trading, licensing, or in some cases, finding the seismic was difficult and prone to errors.
Does this sound like you?
Like any ‘cleaning’ project, investing the time and effort (and yes, money) to do it properly is not easy. It’s simpler to not spend money than it is to invest in something with uncertain returns – especially when the job is hard. Luckily for all involved, our customer decided that this information was too important to leave disorganized, and hired Sigma to perform a database research and clean up.
Sigma’s unique capabilities to get this job done comes from a combination of extensive experience along with the technology we have. Accessing SigMAP and SigNET, our GIS application and database, allows us to research the ownership history of seismic datasets, and partnering with SDLS allowed us to confirm original operatorship of almost every line. In addition, our fifty years of ‘writing things down’ is hard to replicate and allow us unequalled capabilities to get to the bottom of any missing data.
The end result? Sigma delivered five benefits to the business just by cleaning up their seismic database:
1) Centralized data: AFE’s, licenses, land agreements and more are now all centrally loaded into SeisInfo, the seismic management tool in use, making it simpler to find and action data.
2) Efficient data access: Documents are now all online and immediately available, allowing us to dispose of over 25 boxes of paper files. That means reducing paper waste and saving time with more efficient access to documents!
3) Identify overlooked opportunities: 250 lines which were initially identified as trade or unknown were confirmed to be proprietary data in which the company held an interest.
4) Recognize missing data: Three 3D and several 2D lines were missing from the database completely, when the company actually held an interest in them.
5) Resolve outstanding acquisitions: Data from an earlier acquisition was under dispute. Some of which held up a land deal. Sigma was able to confirm ownership, enabling the company to receive all data it was entitled to. This allowed the land deal in question to proceed.
By all measures, the company deemed this to be a success and a valuable investment. Given that we did not consider this company’s database to be in particularly bad shape, it makes us wonder if others could benefit from the same process. Could that company be you?
Connect with us about cleaning up your seismic database or to learn more about the seismic data management services we offer.
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