Abstract
E&P companies are now putting more focus on collaborative asset teamwork to speed and improve decision-making involved with developing oil and gas fields. To facilitate such collaboration, E&P companies are adopting shared, integrated, IT technology to enable multi-disciplinary teams to engage in improved workflow processes across all phases of the oil field life cycle. Much of the data needed to feed these workflow processes can be shared between Service Companies and E&P companies during the planning and execution phases of the wellbore construction process. The "right time" seamless flow of this data between operators and service companies will speed and enhance decision-making.
There have been a number of solutions tried over the past 20+ years, some more successful than others. The WITSML initiative was started in 2000 to update the existing methods for the 21st century and incorporate the lessons learned from previous initiatives. It is sponsored by both E&P operators and oilfield service companies, aimed at providing an industrywide solution for transfer of information between service companies and E&P companies.
This paper will provide a brief review of the WITSML initiative, its original charter and development effort. It will then explore the current status of development for the standard and its API, discuss the current commercial development and the strategy, which aligns the initiative with POSC for the support and enhancement of WITSML. In addition, the paper will briefly discuss future potential areas of benefit for E&P companies, such as WITSML use in the Production Phase of the E&P life cycle.
