Data Management for Upstream
In the world of data management, there are two factors that are important to account for: quality and access.
Measuring data quality was the topic of a PPDM presentation by Jeremy Eade, a Subsurface Data Lead at BP. His approach to data management specifically surrounded the consistency of data surrounding wells.
Data Rules and Business Rules
To start out the discussion, Eade covered data rules and business rules. For those 
who are unfamiliar, a data rule should only be checking one point of quality at a time. For example, whether the well rig release date must be on or off the spud date.
There should be a data rule for each piece of data that the company cares about. A quality data management program should also have business rules that dictate the governance of the database.
The Four C’s
Eade also covered some more specific data quality dimensions, called the Four C’s. Below are some examples of how they apply in an Upstream situation.
Completeness: Can well data stand on its own? Is relevant data from each system included for each well?
Consistency: Is formatting the same across records? Is the same data recorded for each well? Across databases, is data also consistent?
Correctness: This is where data rules comes in. Some thought should be given to how accuracy can be checked for each type of data.
Currency: When was the last time frac data was loaded into the database?
Quality Measurement in Action
Eade went to describe what happened when they started to examine the specifics of data quality at BP. One observation was that G&G spent far too much time on the quality control side.
In addition, after implementing data rules, the team learned that 20 of BP’s wells had null data. They also found many instances where the spud dates was listed after the rig release date.
Best in class data quality data is not useful to any company if they can’t get to it with an intuitive interface. Read this blog post on data management and presentation for more!