SoftNAS: Solving E&P Data Challenges with High-Performance Cloud Storage

Summary

While there are three primary areas that are central to how the oil and gas industry operate, Upstream, Midstream, and Downstream, this article will focus on the Upstream operations. The goal is to dive into how a high-performance, scalable, and secure cloud storage solution can directly address the data-driven operational challenges in the E&P (Exploration and Production) vertical.

E&P’s Most Pressing Storage Issues

During E&P, the oil and gas industry generates vast volumes of data, such as seismic imaging, sensor readings, and process records. Think of seismic imaging as an ultrasound of the earth which provides critical details during the E&P stages. Managing this amount of data on a regular basis involves unique challenges such as:

• Massive data volumes: Seismic imaging and geophysical analysis generate petabytes of high-resolution data, requiring rapid processing and secure storage. For example, a seismic survey may generate terabytes of imaging data which need to be processed and analyzed in various drilling locations. Traditional storage systems do not offer the flexibility to handle this type of data volume sufficiently.
• Latency-sensitive workflows: Low latency is crucial for real-time applications like seismic analysis or drilling operations, where delays in accessing data can negatively impact decision-making and operative efficiencies in the field. If sensor data cannot be transmitted or analyzed immediately or accurately during drilling, opportunities in the field and revenue can be negatively impacted.
• Limited connectivity: Exploration often occurs in remote locations with limited connectivity, creating challenges for data synchronization and access. Drilling sites offshore or in sparse desert locations struggle to scrutinize centralized data, potentially causing data loss and delays. Additional connection challenges to overcome may relate to edge data, edge-to-core or what some call ‘dirty networks.’ Each possesses specific issues:
  • If an oil platform uses edge devices, data transmitted isn’t synced immediately, but rather later in the cloud. Not only can edge data create limited access, but it also requires connection through large data centers which are a costly infrastructure to put in place depending on scale and existing systems.
  • Edge-to-core data needs to be collected and sent to a centralized data center or cloud, however, not all data collected at the edge is sent to the core as a way to save money. Generally, only data seen as ‘critical’ is processed to these centralized locations.
  • Networks that have unreliable or low-quality connections are known as ‘dirty networks.’ They are often found in harsh or extreme remote exploration sites. Using dirty networks are prone to errors and provide slow-inconsistent data.
• Data Security and Compliance: E&P organizations depend on a variety of IT resources, from IT Administrators, Cloud Architects to Cybersecurity teams. However, depending on available talent and budget there may be gaps to fully support the overwhelming need to meet compliance to secure their storage systems, storage environments and sensitive data logs especially, in mid-to-small E&P companies. The modernization with cloud storage ensures sensitive data such as logs, and imaging are safeguarded and reduces issues with non-compliance and risk of exposure.

Utilizing traditional storage systems can make handling the requirements in the oil and gas sector less effective, create bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and time loss.

Drilling operations in the oil and gas industry rely heavily on real-time data streams from sensors and logging tools. These streams provide crucial information such as formation evaluation, pressure readings, and directional data, which are vital to making immediate adjustments to drilling strategies. Quick access to this data for analysis can prevent costly mistakes, optimize resource extraction and enhance efficiency during the drilling process.

Transforming Data Challenges to Solutions

Leveraging a cloud solution, like SoftNAS can help oil and gas operations address these challenges more efficiently. The use cases below are a few ways SoftNAS helped a global E&P provider in the industry with their tailored needs.

• Flexible Deployment: Our cloud solution supports hybrid environments, meaning an organization can have a mixed infrastructure with on-prem hardware or cloud services. No matter the computing environment, SoftNAS provides seamless data access in remote upstream field locations and centralized facilities – an essential capability for the oil and gas industry’s distributed operations.
• Data Protection and Compliance Management: Features like edge-to-core replication, snapshot replication, failover clustering, and encryption ensure data integrity, availability, and security. Edge-to-Core replication is also used to synchronize data from remote edge locations (e.g., drilling sites to centralized clients (e.g. data centers or cloud storage). SoftNAS organizes, secures, and retrieves compliance-related data efficiently, ensuring global energy providers meet strict regulatory audits and reporting requirements with ease.
• Low Latency: Supporting predictive maintenance systems to provide faster insights, enable real-time storage, and processing of IoT sensor data from drilling rigs, pipelines, and other critical infrastructure with minimal delays requires low-latency data operations.
• Compression and Deduplication: SoftNAS leverages data reduction techniques to significantly decrease the amount of storage space needed. By identifying and eliminating redundant data, storage can be optimized for a reduced data footprint across the cloud.
• Data Synchronization Across Global Operations: SoftNAS facilitates data replication and synchronization across the provider’s global sites, ensuring every team has consistent, up-to-date information: a vital feature for cross-site collaboration on exploration projects.
• Support for Edge Computing: Edge computing is enabled as part of the SoftNAS solution, by providing local storage at remote sites, ensuring critical data is processed and stored locally without reliance on continuous cloud connectivity. This reduces latency, enhances performance, and ensures resilience even in disconnected environments.
• Ease of Integration: Works with industry-standard analytics and monitoring tools, simplifying storage management and improving operational efficiency.

Digging Deeper into Technical Advantages

Not only did SoftNAS meet the initial obstacles for the oil and gas provider, but they also recognized the auxiliary impact the solution provided. The E&P provider took advantage of SoftNAS to power their own cloud–based platform, DecisionSpace® 365 to create better collaboration, productivity and revolutionize the workflows across teams and the process lifecycle.

Here is how SoftNAS helped their organization go beyond their own infrastructure roadblocks, in addition to expanding their offering through a self-service model.

DecisionSpace® 365 offers several tools among the software suite, a couple are:

• Well Construction: The technology combines trajectory planning and well string operations to provide an extensive engineering data management solution. In turn, this helps teams in the field collaborate, reduce well prep-time and optimize simulations. Examples such as simulated cement workflows and complex tubular design are how the software is connecting dispersed teams for better well construction.
• Economics and Forecasting: Using this powerful on-demand tool can make it easier for E&P teams to create an economic model and generate a complete picture to calculate and evaluate property values. This allows business and operations teams to create economic simulators, data manager and forecasting of assets, property, and potential acquisitions all while tapping into various reserve management applications.

Like Halliburton DecisionSpace® 365, other E&P software platforms can take advantage of SoftNAS to power their cloud-based upstream analytic tools. Other oil and gas platforms such as Schlumberger’s Pretral, Baker Hughes’ JewelSuite and Emerson’s Paradigm can leverage SoftNAS to go beyond infrastructure roadblocks and expand their software model. These self-service tools not only create a better user experience, but they allow for robust automaton workflows, machine learning, geological modeling and reservoir productivity data for better decision making in the oilfields. Taking advantage of SoftNAS enables these tools for better collaboration, productivity and workflows during the upstream lifecycle.

Fueling Progress of E&P Data

By integrating solutions like SoftNAS, E&P organizations can overcome their infrastructure limitations and pave the way for greater operational excellence. Whether supporting seismic imaging analysis, synchronizing edge-to-core data, or enabling team collaboration through advanced platforms like DecisionSpace® 365, SoftNAS provides the foundation for data storage and innovation in the energy industry. This forward-looking approach ensures that E&P companies can remain competitive and adaptable in an increasingly data-driven landscape.

There are many complicated facets to the E&P industry; this makes managing massive data volumes, latency-sensitive workflow and remote operational needs inherent challenges to its processes. These challenges demand innovative and reliable technology solutions to provide the efficiency and resource optimization needed.

SoftNAS can deliver the solution so global oil and gas providers maintain high-performance, scalable cloud storage solution, seamless data access, real-time processing, and secured data.

Reach out to a SoftNAS Expert for your E&P needs.