In
the October 2000 issue Petroleum
Data Manager (PDM) published the following status report from Mauro
Ribeiro Morand who is the PetroBank Project Coordinator for Petrobras.
The
original Petrobras project to organize its seismic data was initiated in the
early ‘90’s. The IBM/PGS Petrobank software in 1995 and contract was signed
with PGS and MR-DPTS in 1997 for the remastering of Petrobas’ seismic
archive. Remastering operations began for real in December 1997.
Since
the project started, there have been considerable changes in Brazil’s oil
sector. The Petrobras monopoly has ended and the Brazilian government has
created a new agency, the ANP which governs the petroleum industry’s activity
in Brazil. The ANP decided to put the Petrobras data into the public domain and
to refund Petrobras for the cost of the data itself and for the remastering
costs. The public domain rules concern 5 year old seismic data, and 2 year old
well logs. This led to the concept of a single database, a national repository
based on PetroBank, sharing data management costs and making data easily
available to industry. The Banco de Dados E&P (BDEP) has been on-line since
April 2000. BDEP is a consortium of oil and services companies, including (and
sponsored by) ANP. ANP has handed to CPRM (Brazilian Geological Service) the
responsibility to operate the bank. My personal involvement in the project is
as PetroBank Project Coordinator for Petrobras. Currently, we have loaded well
logs, about 80% of the post-stack seismics, and about 60% of the pre-stack
seismic available in Brazil (acquired by Petrobras in the monopoly period).
Most
of this data is in the public domain and is now available to industry. I think
that the pre-stack part of the project is the most exciting one,
(sub-contracted to PGS and MR-DPTS). This project was initiated in
December 1997, and current status is:
1-
About
800,000 pages of observer’s logs scanned (load will finish next month).
2-
Remaster
to high capacity media and PetroBank load of 300,000 tapes with backup
generation. Peak production of 18,000 tapes in one month.
3-
Recovery
of sticky tapes.
4-
Original
media destruction – 30,000 already destroyed.
Loading
pre-stack data into PetroBank requires accurate metadata linking files,
geometry and shotpoint coordinates. Obtaining this information requires a lot
of effort, but it’s the only way to get high quality, useable data, and to have
enough confidence in the transcription process to be able to destroy the
originals. The 300,000 tapes remastered to date have been selected following
the analysis of some 350,000 tapes (10% were duplicates and were discarded, and
4% missing something – coordinates, obs logs). People often believe tape
remastering is straightforward work. It is not! Remastering is a complex
process, much more than just changing tapes. This work can add significant
value to the seismic archive.