Common business objects: Demonstrating interoperability in the oil and gas industry

Abstract

The PetroTechnical Open Software Corp. (POSC) was organized in 1990 to define technical methods to make it easier to design interoperable data solutions for oil and gas companies. When POSC rolls out seed implementations, oilfield service members must validate them, correct any errors or ambiguities, and champion these corrections into the original specifications before full integration into POSC-compliant, commercial products. Organizations like POSC are assuming a new role of promoting formation of projects where E and P companies and vendors jointly test their pieces of the migration puzzle on small subsets of the whole problem. The authors describe three such joint projects. While confirming the value of such open cross-company cooperation, these cases also help to redefine interoperability in terms of business objects that will be common across oilfield companies, their applications, access software, data, or data stores.