11 ms·

UK Releases 130 Terabytes of Oil and Gas Data

219 points by infodocket 8y ago

lifeisstillgood 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
  - mhh__ 8y ago
    Or more realistically, they're hedging their bets: Business's exist to make money not CO2, Green power is becoming increasingly profitable/in demand
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    They're still spending millions lobbying on the wrong side of the argument, so getting greener from a starting point trillions overdrawn. I tend to see any green tinged events as greenwashing. Still, hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised a few times.
  - reitzensteinm 8y ago
    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.
    - haser_au 8y ago
      This.
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      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 8y ago
        When comparing wind or solar with oil or gas, in what sense is wind or solar not cleaner than oil or gas?
        ThomPete 8y ago
        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.
    - mistrial9 8y ago
      The young'ish CEO of .. Dutch Royal Shell (?) .. one of the majors .. was overtaken by an internal coup and kicked out, for embracing green energy openly.. in the early 2000s. It was quite well documented.
  - haser_au 8y ago
    Shell has a legal obligation to make money for shareholders. Shareholders are divesting from fossil fuel companies because (a) they're too high risk, and (b) shareholders want a greener future. That's all it comes down to. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/28/shell-doubles-green-spending-vows-halve-carbon-footprint https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/28/shell-doubl...
  - salty_biscuits 8y ago
    All the big oil companies did a lot of photovoltaic research in the 70's. I think it might have been exxon who were one of the earliest players. I don't think it was sinister then, just a diversification into "energy" companies, especially with the oil crises going on back then.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  We have the unusual position of a government that in any previous parliament would have fallen. The Prime Minister would have resigned on the first defeat and I think we'd already have a new government elected by now. A better government seems unlikely, but probably one with a majority. Thanks to the badly designed fixed-term parliament act government is effectively stuck there, powerless, breaking records for scale of defeat, and utterly discredited. Thanks once again to Cameron then - for letting the LibDems break something they didn't understand. The popular has a chance, while the rest is ignored as government fails to consider anything but Brexit, and can't even deliver that. It would be unbelievable in House of Cards, or Yes, Minister.
  - lifeisstillgood 8y ago
    I was (unusually for me) not discussing the specifics of Brexit, just that once you take away the politicians usual oversight, many unusual, perhaps radical, positive things seem to happen. Sadly the lesson is not to get rid of the politicians completely.
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      In some ways it's more like how politics used to be. Before entire parties were expected to be perfectly on message for every minor policy. Not exactly independent, but a little freedom to act and think. The message may not be to get rid of politicians, but perhaps that a major weakening of the party system is called for. Getting rid of career politicians might be a good move though. Course I wouldn't expect any party with realistic chance of government to favour either those or PR. I can hope though... :)
- 7952 8y ago
  The conservatives have actually been pretty good on Opendata for quite a while. They made lots of mapping and lidar data available.
HenryBemis 8y ago
> 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.
- pjc50 8y ago
  They're not exactly secret either. Has any terrorist group tried this in a Western country?
  - HenryBemis 8y ago
    Fair point, not yet. But I assume that a pipe that is placed 5m underground on an unmarked path crossing a valley, was done so for a security as well as convenience. I will not apply to see that data, but if I was a "Red Team", it would be 'useful' information to have.
    - derefr 8y ago
      They used to have quite the secrets policy in place to cover critical fuel infrastructure, yes. I'm pretty sure the only reason they're opening this up now, is that it's now become so easy to get ground-penetrating radar satellites into space, that every state actor now knows where all everyone else's pipes are. They can't hide it, so they may as well give up trying.
  - godelski 8y ago
    And let's be honest with ourselves, if they were trying to destroy things (and not... well... terrorize...) then there are A LOT of sectors that are EXTREMELY vulnerable [0]. It doesn't take much knowledge or money to perform acts that would have extreme economic impacts. But wannacry (or something far worse) is less scary than a person shooting up a night club. Terrorists are trying to strike fear, not economical damage. State actors would be the ones trying to do economic damage, but we're not really at war with people that would do that (on a meaningful scale). [0] a quick google search will lead you down a huge rabbit hole. Here's a good start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL9q2lOZ1Fw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL9q2lOZ1Fw but there's huge flaws in all these sectors and even in cellular communication. Just watch some Black Hat and Def Con conference talks.
ktpsns 8y ago
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-7594-423f-81d8-b31b2d38bcb5/jpt_2019_3_uk_data_repository_hero.jpg https://www.spe.org/media/filer_public/e3/31/e331595a-7594-4...) could be made of 130TB volumetric geometry and scalar field data, (in this case miserably) downsampled before rendering.
convivialdingo 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
justinjlynn 8y ago
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.
shiftpgdn 8y ago
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.
- nwsm 8y ago
  It would take a ton of cash to disrupt O&G. Hundreds of millions of $. In a notoriously volatile market that may or may not be dying / declining.
  - shiftpgdn 8y ago
    You're not completely wrong but O&G don't really hire all-star software developers. Most of the software is complete crudware with asp/dated mssql back ends and just buckets of bad and legacy code. I've also seen a lot of geo/petro phsycists/processors intentionally not want to help because they know heavy automation endangers their job.
    - nwsm 8y ago
      Labor is one thing but I'm really talking about how expensive it would be to get access to dozens of live rigs and tons of data.
    - aklascheema 8y ago
      Is this really the case? Can you give us some use cases where software could increase productivity in o&g that isn't being done already? One could argue that existing software even if legacy works and gets the job done so what is to (significantly) gain from writing new (and improved) software?
      - nwsm 8y ago
rambojazz 8y ago
And the license is...?
- ilsorhei 8y ago
  I see the data is published under the Open Government Licence
stuaxo 8y ago
The current government is super keen on getting fracking started.
cybervegan 8y ago
And it should all be left exactly where it is. Fossil fuels are killing our people and our environment.
piceas 8y ago
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-publications/seismic-data/ https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centre/data-downloads-and... [2] https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centre/interactive-maps-and-tools/ https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centre/interactive-maps-a... [3] https://data-ogauthority.opendata.arcgis.com/pages/statistics https://data-ogauthority.opendata.arcgis.com/pages/statistic... [4] gas! https://itportal.ogauthority.co.uk/web_files/gis/images/WordClouds/whole_p1528.jpg https://itportal.ogauthority.co.uk/web_files/gis/images/Word...
Reason077 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
  - Gravityloss 8y ago
    There's a really nice fictional drama miniseries from 2018 about the discovery of oil in Norway: "Lykkeland". I assume it's a very stylized version of what actually happened but highlights the conflicting interests a little bit.
  - tim333 8y ago
    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
    - andy_ppp 8y ago
      It says in that link that it was effectively abolished in the 2016 bugdet...
    - Reason077 8y ago
      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-revenue-tax https://www.gov.uk/guidance/oil-gas-and-mining-petroleum-rev...
dev_north_east 8y ago
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.
Komodoro 8y ago
This make generate of a lot of controversy and even deploy more wars.
kaennar 8y ago
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.

219 points by infodocket 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.
- mhh__ 8y ago
  Or more realistically, they're hedging their bets: Business's exist to make money not CO2, Green power is becoming increasingly profitable/in demand
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  They're still spending millions lobbying on the wrong side of the argument, so getting greener from a starting point trillions overdrawn. I tend to see any green tinged events as greenwashing. Still, hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised a few times.
- reitzensteinm 8y ago
  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.
  - haser_au 8y ago
    This.
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      When comparing wind or solar with oil or gas, in what sense is wind or solar not cleaner than oil or gas?
      - ThomPete 8y ago
        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.
  - mistrial9 8y ago
    The young'ish CEO of .. Dutch Royal Shell (?) .. one of the majors .. was overtaken by an internal coup and kicked out, for embracing green energy openly.. in the early 2000s. It was quite well documented.
- haser_au 8y ago
  Shell has a legal obligation to make money for shareholders. Shareholders are divesting from fossil fuel companies because (a) they're too high risk, and (b) shareholders want a greener future. That's all it comes down to. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/28/shell-doubles-green-spending-vows-halve-carbon-footprint https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/28/shell-doubl...
- salty_biscuits 8y ago
  All the big oil companies did a lot of photovoltaic research in the 70's. I think it might have been exxon who were one of the earliest players. I don't think it was sinister then, just a diversification into "energy" companies, especially with the oil crises going on back then.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
We have the unusual position of a government that in any previous parliament would have fallen. The Prime Minister would have resigned on the first defeat and I think we'd already have a new government elected by now. A better government seems unlikely, but probably one with a majority. Thanks to the badly designed fixed-term parliament act government is effectively stuck there, powerless, breaking records for scale of defeat, and utterly discredited. Thanks once again to Cameron then - for letting the LibDems break something they didn't understand. The popular has a chance, while the rest is ignored as government fails to consider anything but Brexit, and can't even deliver that. It would be unbelievable in House of Cards, or Yes, Minister.
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  I was (unusually for me) not discussing the specifics of Brexit, just that once you take away the politicians usual oversight, many unusual, perhaps radical, positive things seem to happen. Sadly the lesson is not to get rid of the politicians completely.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    In some ways it's more like how politics used to be. Before entire parties were expected to be perfectly on message for every minor policy. Not exactly independent, but a little freedom to act and think. The message may not be to get rid of politicians, but perhaps that a major weakening of the party system is called for. Getting rid of career politicians might be a good move though. Course I wouldn't expect any party with realistic chance of government to favour either those or PR. I can hope though... :)
7952 8y ago
The conservatives have actually been pretty good on Opendata for quite a while. They made lots of mapping and lidar data available.

HenryBemis 8y ago

> 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.

pjc50 8y ago
They're not exactly secret either. Has any terrorist group tried this in a Western country?
- HenryBemis 8y ago
  Fair point, not yet. But I assume that a pipe that is placed 5m underground on an unmarked path crossing a valley, was done so for a security as well as convenience. I will not apply to see that data, but if I was a "Red Team", it would be 'useful' information to have.
  - derefr 8y ago
    They used to have quite the secrets policy in place to cover critical fuel infrastructure, yes. I'm pretty sure the only reason they're opening this up now, is that it's now become so easy to get ground-penetrating radar satellites into space, that every state actor now knows where all everyone else's pipes are. They can't hide it, so they may as well give up trying.
- godelski 8y ago
  And let's be honest with ourselves, if they were trying to destroy things (and not... well... terrorize...) then there are A LOT of sectors that are EXTREMELY vulnerable [0]. It doesn't take much knowledge or money to perform acts that would have extreme economic impacts. But wannacry (or something far worse) is less scary than a person shooting up a night club. Terrorists are trying to strike fear, not economical damage. State actors would be the ones trying to do economic damage, but we're not really at war with people that would do that (on a meaningful scale). [0] a quick google search will lead you down a huge rabbit hole. Here's a good start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL9q2lOZ1Fw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL9q2lOZ1Fw but there's huge flaws in all these sectors and even in cellular communication. Just watch some Black Hat and Def Con conference talks.

ktpsns 8y ago

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-7594-423f-81d8-b31b2d38bcb5/jpt_2019_3_uk_data_repository_hero.jpg https://www.spe.org/media/filer_public/e3/31/e331595a-7594-4...) could be made of 130TB volumetric geometry and scalar field data, (in this case miserably) downsampled before rendering.

convivialdingo 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

justinjlynn 8y ago

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.

shiftpgdn 8y ago

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.

nwsm 8y ago
It would take a ton of cash to disrupt O&G. Hundreds of millions of $. In a notoriously volatile market that may or may not be dying / declining.
- shiftpgdn 8y ago
  You're not completely wrong but O&G don't really hire all-star software developers. Most of the software is complete crudware with asp/dated mssql back ends and just buckets of bad and legacy code. I've also seen a lot of geo/petro phsycists/processors intentionally not want to help because they know heavy automation endangers their job.
  - nwsm 8y ago
    Labor is one thing but I'm really talking about how expensive it would be to get access to dozens of live rigs and tons of data.
  - aklascheema 8y ago
    Is this really the case? Can you give us some use cases where software could increase productivity in o&g that isn't being done already? One could argue that existing software even if legacy works and gets the job done so what is to (significantly) gain from writing new (and improved) software?
    - nwsm 8y ago

rambojazz 8y ago

And the license is...?

ilsorhei 8y ago
I see the data is published under the Open Government Licence

stuaxo 8y ago

The current government is super keen on getting fracking started.

cybervegan 8y ago

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

piceas 8y ago

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-publications/seismic-data/ https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centre/data-downloads-and... [2] https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centre/interactive-maps-and-tools/ https://www.ogauthority.co.uk/data-centre/interactive-maps-a... [3] https://data-ogauthority.opendata.arcgis.com/pages/statistics https://data-ogauthority.opendata.arcgis.com/pages/statistic... [4] gas! https://itportal.ogauthority.co.uk/web_files/gis/images/WordClouds/whole_p1528.jpg https://itportal.ogauthority.co.uk/web_files/gis/images/Word...

Reason077 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.
- Gravityloss 8y ago
  There's a really nice fictional drama miniseries from 2018 about the discovery of oil in Norway: "Lykkeland". I assume it's a very stylized version of what actually happened but highlights the conflicting interests a little bit.
- tim333 8y ago
  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
  - andy_ppp 8y ago
    It says in that link that it was effectively abolished in the 2016 bugdet...
  - Reason077 8y ago
    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-revenue-tax https://www.gov.uk/guidance/oil-gas-and-mining-petroleum-rev...

dev_north_east 8y ago

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.

Komodoro 8y ago

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

kaennar 8y ago

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.