Profit Magazine - November 2007

ENERGY | DATA MANAGEMENT
FUELING A BETTER VIEW OF
INFORMATION
DIAMOND OFFSHORE EASES DATA MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES.

BY JOHN PAPAGEORGE

any oil and gas companies are global organizations
with larger budgets than most countries, but mobile
offshore rigs suffer from both a lack of IT infrastruc-
ture and resources to manage an enormous amount
of information and complicated data that can range from the
measurement of seismic processes and pressure to the moni-
toring of temperature gradients. To make matters worse, these
complex variables must all be available in real time.

According to Michael Heagney, research director at Energy Insights and a veteran of the oil industry for more than 30 years, the need for a scalable infrastructure to manage the problems associated with information overload is one of the greatest challenges facing the oil and gas industry. Heagney believes that the question of how to get the right data at the right time is more critical now than ever before. Compounding the weight of dealing with information overload is the scarcity of people with the skills and knowledge to implement solutions that can manage the overabundance of data.

DAN HUBIG

“Because of the difficulty in finding people with the right skills, many oil and gas companies no longer have integration staffs. As a result, technology solutions must be both comprehensive and well integrated to fit enterprisewide business needs,” says Heagney. “They don’t want

tinker toys in a can; they want something that’s already fully assembled. These companies do not want a solution that takes a team of people to figure out.”

A CRITICAL NEED FOR INFORMATION

Michael Trahan, CIO of Diamond Offshore Drilling, agrees
with Heagney that access to more and better information has
become a critical issue, and a big part of that challenge is the
task of finding and keeping qualified information technol-
ogy (IT) people during profitable cycles. But Trahan also
emphasizes that it’s an issue not just within the data center
but throughout the company and the industry. Because of the
influx of new people in all parts of the organization, companies
such as Diamond need to be
particularly sensitive to issues
such as ease of use, consistency,
and flexibility.

“The oil and gas industry is currently having trouble keeping its qualified people,” says Trahan. “Because Diamond has had enormous change in people due to promotions, relocations, turnovers, and new hires, many people are finding themselves in unfamiliar situations. We need to have information and business systems that are consistent across locations, especially if those locations are spread across the globe.”