Meeting Notes:
POSC Member General Meeting
November 1997

C. Mobil Executive Presentation; Lou Allstadt (Mobil)

Mr. Allstadt began (MS PowerPoint V4 presentation) by expressing concern that E&P professionals spend sixty percent of their time finding and verifying data. His presentation (to be posted) was entitled: Data Integration: The Business Imperative. He covered these points:

• The oil and gas industry is thriving; there are world class opportunities out there.
• Data Integration and data management are core competencies for Mobil.
• The business need for data integration is compelling, especially with the growth of collaboration, joint ventures, alliances, trades, etc.
• Environmental restraints in frontier areas are causing greater investment in offshore deep water plays.
• Operators are negotiating allocation agreements for integrated operations, trades, and swaps, e.g. in the heavy oil operations in California. Without effective standards and data sharing such agreements can take many years to achieve.
• Alliances among oil companies and contractors require ongoing sharing of data among the parties, e.g. to work large opportunities such as Hibernia.
• There is no way a single company can create a competitive advantage by creating its own internal data models; Mobil is done with internally designed data bases.
• Issues to address include: achieving data integration takes a long time, the entire E&P life cycle must be addressed, flexibility must be maintained to react to changing requirements, integration should include oil and gas accounting (recognizing possible anti-trust implications), the Year 2000 crisis will reduce the resources available for data integration work, and the business imperative of bottom-line impact.

Discussion

• David Archer (DA): What role do you see for National Oil Companies?
Lou Allstadt (LA): National oil companies tend to dictate the use of their own standards, e.g. in the US. We must urge them to line up with international standardization efforts, such as POSC.
• Tom Nash (TN): Would you contrast data handling between upstream and downstream?
LA: It is perceived that there is less value from data sharing in the downstream area. Technical data is viewed as proprietary. [Ed.: This may help explain the focus of the STEP Process Plant and POSC/CAESAR projects on data sharing WITHIN as opposed to AMONG individual facilities.]
• Tarek Ghazi (TG): How does Mobil measure the value of data integration?
LA: Probably not very well. We charge out technical expenses to business units to create a market. If some work is not adding value, then business units won't pay for it.
• Laramie Winczewski (LW): Is there a central vision to coordinate such decisions?
LA: There is central coordination to provide guidance. Reconciling the vision with operational immediacy is a difficult but real problem.

D. Annual POSC Planning Meeting Report; Bob Pindell (POSC Board Chair), David Archer (POSC)

Bob presented (MS PowerPoint V4 presentation) a report on the recent POSC planning meeting attended by Board members and the POSC officers. He covered the future POSC drivers, goals, principles, and implications as determined in the planning meeting. He reviewed a straw-man model of a three-part POSC structure: core maintenance work, new common-purpose projects, and consultancy/joint industry projects.

• Core Maintenance was characterized as including the maintenance of Epicentre and the other POSC specifications, information programs and meetings, etc. The core maintenance workload will be supported by member fees.
• New Common-Purpose Projects were characterized as including work to expand and/or improve the POSC standards and specifications for the benefit of all POSC members. This work will be funded by interested members. The work will follow the POSC open process, i.e. will be open to all members.
• Consultancy/Joint Industry Projects were characterized as including contracted work for the benefit of the project sponsors. At the discretion of the project sponsors, results related to POSC specifications may be made available to POSC for future consideration. Bob noted that this category of work may bring about some issues regarding competition and intellectual property rights, but he emphasized that POSC did not intend to become a commercial organization. He added that it is good for the POSC staff to be challenged to do more than work on standards and specifications.

Bob concluded by saying that there is no change to POSC's original objectives or goals.

Bob added a congratulations to David Archer on being appointed as the new POSC CEO and President.

David presented (MS PowerPoint V4 presentation) his views on the results of the planning session. He characterized 1998 as a year of transition which will proceed upon agreement on the way forward. He gave examples of the three kinds of work identified by Bob Pindell. He concluded with some observations and advice. He praised the value of collaboration and reflected on the need to apply standards and specifications to real business situations.

Discussion

• Nico de Rooij (NdR) said that in general he appreciated the direction being proposed. He started the discussion by raising a series of questions, which follow.
• NdR: What will be the balance of power among the membership segments in terms of their representation on the new POSC Board?
RP: The intent is to not distort the balance of power. We talked about using criteria like size and type of organization to define membership segments. Geographic balance should be a result of the election process. I don't think we should tinker too much with the segmentation and voting rules.
• NdR: If a motivation for these changes is to reduce the cost of POSC for the current sponsors, is there a danger of starving the maintenance workload?
RP: The intent is to not starve the maintenance workload. Sponsors were originally envisioned to be phased out. We are now reverting to the original plan to make a membership organization.
Gary Hodge (GH): This will be a problem only if members abandon the effort.
DA: Starving the maintenance workload is a risk. We have to make the maintenance workload self-sustaining.

• NdR: How will the membership be involved in reviewing and validating the new Business Plan?
RP: We are getting some member input today. We will make the new Business Plan available for member input. I don't know the mechanism that we will use.
NdR: We need a process to verify the Business Plan.
DA: The definition of that process will be written in the Business Plan draft.
RP: Some form of member validation is appropriate.
Tom Nash (TN): There is more responsibility than previously on members to provide feedback and to do so in a timely manner.
NdR: We need sufficient detail so we can engage in a debate on the issues.
• NdR: Will the diversity of the new Board make it impossible for POSC to act decisively on major issues?
RP: There is a concern not to let the new POSC Board get too large. If the Board is not too large, then variety will not be an issue. Common objectives will ensure that the Board works well.
• TN: How many Board members are envisioned?
RP: We have been talking about ten to twelve.
DA: We have considered four to five categories of two to three representatives each.
• NdR: Will POSC be split into multiple organizations?
RP: No, POSC will remain a single organization.
DA: POSC will remain the same legal entity that it is today.
• NdR: What will be done with profits obtained from project work?
Gary Hodge: If such profits are sustainable, they would be used to reduce cost (i.e. member fees) or increase capacity of the maintenance workload.
Bertrand du Castel: The lawyers indicate that not-for-profit status means that profits are used within the organization (as opposed to be returned to share-holders).
• NdR: Will POSC establish a relationship with ISO for the maintenance of the specifications?
DA: This idea has not been considered and may not be considered in the initial Business Plan.
• NdR: Will the development of more reference values be considered part of the maintenance workload?
DA: In general, work on reference values is part of the maintenance workload. Concentrated reference value work in a specific area could be part of a project, e.g. POSC/CAESAR for production facilities.
• NdR: What is the difference between a New Common Project and a Joint Industry Project?
RP: A new common-purpose project is intended to fund the development of new standards and specifications, while a joint industry project is focused on providing a solution for the project sponsors.
• Bob Decker: Is it a good idea for research projects to have elective funding? Aren't some projects relevant to all members, e.g. interoperability? Will member companies hold back and let others carry the funding burden?
Larry Bellomy: It is time for members to have some choices. POSC should make funding attractive, e.g. a project to develop the shared earth model, or POSC should go away.
• Åge Haldorsen: Is it true that POSC resources will be funded as part of the maintenance workload to be used to work on new common projects?
DA: That is not the concept.
• Tarek Ghazi (TG): Maybe it is time to change the focus of POSC away from software. Software is the least of the issues, e.g. reference values, data loading. There are a lot of softer issues standing in the way. Can we devote resources to these issues? Of course, POSC has to pay more attention to marketing: People, Change Management, Best Practices.
Laramie Winczewski (LW): This is "a real need for change" and not "a need for real change." The software is mature. People that run data and loose integration were all over the SEG exhibit floor. Do you have the means to make a quiet revolution to what the membership wants?
• How much of the POSC budget will come from membership fees?
RP: Fees will still be dependent on the size of an organization. The level of the fees may change more for larger organizations than for smaller organizations. This will be played out in the Business Plan. We don't have the definitive answers yet.
DA: The current overall budget is about 5 million dollars. Sponsors are paying about 2.2 million.
• Van Bui-Tran (VBT): Will all of the results from the new common projects be available to all POSC members?
DA: The intellectual property will belong to POSC. Do you want to delay the release of the results to all members? If so, a joint industry project may be used.
Jean-Paul Marbeau: In joint industry projects, the results remain with the sponsoring companies until they choose to share the results, e.g. with POSC and its members.
• DA to NdR: How should members get involved in developing the Business Plan?
NdR: Break-out sessions working on specific areas have worked well in the past. Publishing a draft on the Web Site for comments can be done.
• Jim Theriot: How is the movement of results from projects to standards and specifications funded?
DA: The service of integrating results is funded by the project that developed the results.
• William O'Brien: These proposals seem to formalize what has been happening. Have you looked at the actual distribution of resources over these work categories?
DA: Yes. We find that a significant amount of resources have been going to projects -- largely unpaid.

E. Demonstration of a Complete Epicentre Data Management Solution; Phil Davies (CGG/PECC), Steve Trythall (Prism Technologies), Ross Davidson and Steve Hawtin (Oilfield Systems)

1. Extracting selected data from a POSC Data Store (managed by PECC's PetroVision) into a Staged Data Store (using Prism's Exchange Manager)
2. Adding data from a GeoShare file into the Stated Data Store (using Oilfield Systems' DAEX)
3. Correlating and merging selected data from the Stated Data Store into the POSC Data Store (using Prism's Exchange Manager)
4. Viewing the data in the POSC Data Store (using PECC's PetroVision)
5. Extracting selected data from the POSC Data Store for transfer to a Landmark Graphics' OpenWorks data base (using Oilfield Systems' DAEX)

Discussion

• Michael Ring (MR): What was the biggest challenge to achieving this demonstration of product interoperability?
Steve Hawtin (SH): It was defining the common data footprint.
• MR: What can you say about the performance of the demonstration?
SH: The demonstration configuration does not have sufficiently good performance for commercial use.
Steve Trythall (ST): The correlate and merge operation has a fixed overhead. The penalty is small for a large quantity of data. The POSC Haddock data set can be correlated and merged in about one hour. This was measured using our Epicentre Access product. The time should be reduced by 50% using the LightSIP product.
• LW: Would you characterize the kind of interoperability that you demonstrated?
SH: This demonstrates interoperability among the three tools.
ST: The subject here is data management tools that address the real-world situation where data is moved in and out of POSC Data Stores.
LW: This is an important aspect of interoperability, but is different from the application interoperability goal.
• Dan Schenck (DS): Is DAEX configurable for other kinds of data?
SH: Yes.

F. Schlumberger: Workshop Announcement; Najib Abusalbi (Schlumberger / GeoQuest)

Najib gave an overview of the three presentations planned for the Supplier Workshop:

1. The GeoQuest Product Line (Larry Denver)
2. GeoFrame Release 3.0 (Frank Marrone)
3. GeoFrame Architecture (Najib Abusalbi)

G. Recent Conference Highlights; Struby Overton (POSC)

• FOCUS Conference in Melbourne (September)
• FOCUS Conference in Oslo (September)
• World Petroleum Congress in Beijing (October)
• SPE in San Antonio (October)
• SEG in Dallas (November)

H. Landmark Graphics; Mike Weiss (Landmark Graphics)

Discussion

• NdR: Why has Landmark decided not to participate in the POSC Interoperability and Business Objects work effort?
Mike Weiss (MW): Landmark did hold an internal workshop on the POSC Interoperability work in September. We are pleased with the work completed thus far. We will help the effort when required. Alternatively, Landmark could participate with the objective of influencing the outcome of the work. We choose to wait and see the results from the work. If we are not satisfied, then we will respond.
BdC: I believe that Landmark should participate actively in this work.
• NdR: Does Landmark have a mapping between OpenWorks and Epicentre and, if so, will Landmark publish the mapping?
MW: No. We are working on a full mapping. We waited until our prototype projects were completed. We are defining a full mapping for OpenWorks Version 5 and we are prepared to publish it.
• Jay Hollingsworth (JH): Is there a plan to convert the existing 200 tables in OpenWorks to Epicentre?
MW: Not at the present time, but if we decide to adopt the results from the WIME project, we will have to change existing tables. We will not change everything tomorrow. As we find middle layer tools to use, that may ease the transition. We are looking at that to decide when to move.
• JH: Why is Landmark not taking up the POSC reference values?
MW: We added units of measure handling in OpenWorks Version 5 using reference values from POSC. As we need such data, we will add it.
• NdR: As there is more use of Landmark products for corporate data stores, what is being done to improve the weak enforcement of business rules?
MW: OpenExplorer has extra business rules, e.g. referential integrity. For the first release, we have not defined a user tool to define additional business rules.

I. RESCUE; Tom Test (Phillips Petroleum)

Discussion

• NdR: What is the relationship between RESCUE and the OMEGA project?
Tom Test (TT): There is no formal relationship now.
Najib Abusalbi (NA): Project OMEGA will send a representative to the RESCUE meeting next week. OMEGA is considering joining RESCUE.

• New POSC Business Plan
• Possible New Common-Purpose Projects, e.g.
• Shared Earth Model
• POSC - POSC/CAESAR Coordination
• SPIAG Update
• URGENT Update
• Compliance Programs and Plans

X. Action Items