Abstract
The current standard infrastructure for delivery of wellsite data uses SOAP Web services over the HTTP protocol. More than a decade of experience in this environment has revealed significant challenges for timely delivery of wellsite data. At the same time, data volumes are increasing exponentially in an ever more connected world. To address these issues, an entirely new protocol stack, based on the latest available Web standards, has been developed.
The Energistics Transfer Protocol, or ETP (Energistics 2016), is a new communications protocol specification that enables efficient transfer of data between rig site, office, and applications. The initial use case is for real-time data; however, it is anticipated that ETP will be expanded to include functionality for historical data queries.
ETP has been specifically envisioned and designed to meet the unique needs of the upstream oil and gas industry and specially to facilitate the exchange of data in the Energistics family of data standards, which includes WITSML™, PRODML™ and RESQML™.
One of the initial goals of ETP is to support everything from WITS-style devices through to html5-enabled mobile devices with a single, simple-to-implement protocol. Some of the main use cases are to move real-time data between applications, including:
Device to wellsite provider (acquisition system)
Transfer from a wellsite provider to a WITSML store (aggregation server)
Transfer of data from WITSML store to WITSML store (server replication)
Transfer of data from WITSML store to client applications
ETP defines a notification mechanism so data receivers do not have to poll for data and can receive new data as soon as they are available from a data provider.
This paper presents the challenges faced by the industry, a description of the alternatives and technology choices that have been made, and an analysis of performance improvements based on laboratory and field trials for both WITSML (drilling) and RESQML (earth modeling/reservoir).
