Gary, Anthony¹, William E Full², Garry Jones³
(1) Tramontane, Inc, Salt Lake City, UT
(2) Advanced Solutions Group, Univ. of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
(3) Unocal Corp, Sugar Land, TX

ABSTRACT: Biostratigraphy Web Portal: Giving the Petroleum Geoscientist Access to Key Data

Historically, petroleum companies maintained large staffs of specialists (e.g., geochemists, sedimentologists, biostratigraphers) to collect, maintain, interpret and distribute key data to geoscientists. Over the past couple decades, the amount of geologic data has dramatically increased while the numbers of specialists available to manage it have decreased. It is therefore a considerable challenge to create tangible value from data in the specialists’ domain.
Specialists’ data must be vetted of errors and sometimes require various transforms and fixes. In addition, someone must cast the data into a structure that is understandable by the non-specialist. Geoscientists in some companies still face data access problems both in terms of content, timeliness of delivery, or both. The worst case is that data are simply not used.
Unocal Corporation has addressed these problems for their biostratigraphic and log-derived sand count data by developing a database and web-enabled portal that allows direct access to these data. The portal has a variety of queries, analyses, and displays that are designed to meet the specific needs of petroleum geoscientists. The underlying architecture is based on a combination of database management software in conjunction with JAVA programming. A key to successful development has been to allow the user community to be the primary driver and not the IT community. Other keys to the success of the portal are the GIS, Graphic visualization and report functions.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90026©2004 AAPG Annual Meeting, Dallas, Texas, April 18-21, 2004.