An alliance of petroleum companies, exploration contractors, and software vendors has stepped up efforts to develop a software specification that makes a wide range of upstream applications compatible.
The Open Spirit framework software is anticipated to become the first implementation of the Petrotechnical Open System Corp. (POSC) standard, currently being developed across all sectors of the international oil and gas exploration and production industry.
Oil company members of the Open Spirit alliance, which was formed 2 years ago, include Royal Dutch/Shell, Elf Aquitaine, Chev- ron Corp., Statoil AS, and BG plc.
Exploration contractors in the alliance include France's Cie. G?n?rale de G?ophysique (CGG) and Institut Fran?ais du P?trole and the two newest members, Schlumberger Inc.'s Geoquest unit and Petroleum Geo-Services AS (PGS), Oslo.
Software goals
The Open Spirit software is being developed and marketed by Prismtech Ltd., Gateshead, U.K. It is intended to make software from a number of vendors, plus in-house software developed by oil companies, all compatible.
A new push to bring the Open Spirit software to market more quickly has been initiated by Geoquest, PGS, and CGG in conjunction with Shell, Chevron, and Elf.
Ben Weltevrede, operator of the Open Spirit Alliance, said, "Through this joint initiative, we will step up development efforts to reach more quickly our goal of creating true interoperability among heterogeneous applications and platforms.
"The ultimate success of Open Spirit hinges on the availability of end-user products. We fully expect this group of companies to bring a critical mass to the market before 2000."
David Archer, president of POSC, said, "The successful implementation of Open Spirit represents a major step towards one of the fundamental goals of the POSC initiative; it will bring true 'plug-and-play' integration to the E&P industry."
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