Cairn India Mitigates Risk and Optimizes Business Performance with Unique Approach to CDMS

Overcome resource and data management constraints

Cairn India Ltd. has been going through an intense period of domestic exploration and development activity. Given the fast pace of these projects in a resource-constrained and competitive market, the company wanted to apply new technologies, improve existing processes, and find innovative ways to work more efficiently. It was also crucial to ensure that key decisions were based on validated data and information in order to effectively manage risk and optimize performance.

Cairn India realized that the following enhancements were needed:

• a corporate database to store increasing volumes of data received from operations (drilling, seismic acquisition and processing, production) and the G&G community (interpretations)
• high-value data backup procedures (for tapes and other media) with more visibility to users
• high-value interpretations recorded, labeled, and stored for future reference
• a way to enforce standards
• secure levels of access and data security to guard against alterations
• formalized workflows
• an audit trail
• an overall sense of confidence in data quality.

Centralize data services

Project objectives

The company's main Information Management (IM) project objectives were to be able to manage all E&P data in a single corporate datastore, validate data according to defined business rules, and preserve and grow the value of investment in data and information. After considering several service providers to meet these objectives, Cairn India selected Schlumberger to drive the project because of its proven leadership in E&P IM and its proposed state-of-the-art technology solution:

• ProSource Corporate software—to consolidate well data types (e.g., deviation, tests, cores, core analysis, markers, zones, casing, and fluid analysis) into a centralized master database.
• ProSource Seismic and ProSource Results software—to manage seismic data and enable knowledge management.
• ProSource Connectors—to access GeoFrame* integrated reservoir characterization system, OpenWorks® geosciences project database software, LogDB* log data storage and retrieval software, and Petrel* seismic-to-simulation software.
• managed services—to perform application hosting, support, and system integration activities (customize ProSource Connectors and integrate Documentum®, Geolog®, Interactive Petrophysics™, and EDM™).

A complete solution

Corporate Database Management Services (CDMS) was the chosen business model for this project. CDMS is a fully managed service that utilizes new and innovative concepts that can be adapted to a company’s needs. In this case, the complete infrastructure resides in a secure Schlumberger data center, which is hosted, maintained, and updated by Schlumberger personnel. Cairn India owns the entire suite of software and Schlumberger provides the hardware (servers, routers, etc.) on a rental basis. The offsite data center facility is connected to the Cairn India office via a 4 mbps dedicated line, and the whole installation is controlled and monitored by access cards and cameras.

This data center contains the entire suite of ProSource software, providing a scalable solution ideally suited to the company’s growing data integration, accessibility, and interoperability requirements. With its built-in capabilities for data loading, exporting, and administration, the ProSource platform is the framework foundation for a fully integrated system.

Enhanced functionalities

In collaboration with Infosys® Technologies, Schlumberger engineers enhanced ProSource software functionality by building additional connectors for Geolog, Interactive Petrophysics (IP), and EDM. These connectors provide read access to datastores through the ProSource tree, so that users can select raw logs from LogDB using the ProSource interface and transfer the selected log file to either Geolog or IP. The final interpreted logs from Geolog and IP can then be transferred back to the corporate Seabed database for final archiving. A customized Documentum connector was also built, enabling users to select relevant well or seismic data through the ProSource interface and launch Documentum in context to view any associated documents.

Setup and support

The CDMS agreement between Cairn India and Schlumberger covered a five-year period, which was autoregulated by a set of SLAs and KPIs, and consisted of two main phases: 1) the Project phase, and 2) the Service Delivery phase.

In the Project phase, the Schlumberger project implementation team worked together with the Cairn India team to design and implement the Corporate Data Management Solution. This phase consisted of a data loading pilot to first test the solution. The design, implementation, and testing milestones were accompanied by incentives or penalties based on early or late delivery of the milestone. Once satisfactory results were attained, the Service Delivery phase began. This phase consisted of migrating legacy data stored in disparate file systems to the corporate database, loading any new data coming into the corporate database, and performing system integration. This phase was accompanied by a set of quarterly KPIs and monthly SLAs.

CDMS benefits to Cairn India

Following are some of the direct benefits that were received by Cairn India when CDMS was implemented:

• reduced costs by eliminating the need to invest in hardware, software, or personnel
• reduced workflow cycle time with faster and easier access to validated data and information
• improved performance by allowing geoscientists and engineers to focus on their core operations
• allowed better and faster decisions with quality data
• optimized E&P workflows through integration of disparate datastores and a common Web and GIS interface
• reduced investment in proprietary solutions through use of proven commercial technology and services that incorporate industry standards
• enabled recording and storing of interpretations for future reference along with relevant context details
• improved data quality with only validated information archived.

Positioned to meet current and future data management needs

Schlumberger helped Cairn India move from an uncontrolled IM environment to an organized and secure one. The solution not only consolidated and secured data, it also allowed employees to focus 100% of their time on core business tasks. The company now has peace of mind knowing that current and future data assets will be carefully managed by a professional E&P services team that understands the cost of data acquisition and the value of information to the analysis and decision-making process of cross-disciplinary groups. Costs associated with data risks have been reduced, as there is less chance of losing data and greater ability to keep high-quality, validated information in the centralized corporate database.

Schlumberger Information Solutions

Schlumberger Information Solutions (SIS) is an operating unit of Schlumberger that  provides software, information management, IT, and related services. SIS collaborates closely with oil and gas companies to solve today’s tough reservoir challenges with an open business approach and comprehensive solution deployment. Through our technologies and services, oil and gas companies empower their people to improve business performance by reducing exploration and development risk and optimizing operational efficiencies.

E-mail sisinfo@slb.com or contact your local Schlumberger representative to learn more.