Realising the value potential of digitalisation requires a combination of data access and data analytics. For data analytics of subsurface data, most oil and gas operators rely primarily on software developed by third party vendors.
While this will continue to be the case with increased digitalisation, improved data access opens the opportunity for end-users to additionally analyse and investigate data in more direct ways.
Citizen data scientists
Domain experts working on data directly with the use of high-level programming languages like Python or MySQL, or different general purpose data analytics tools like PowerBI or Grafana are commonly referred to as citizen data scientists.
Citizen data scientists in a typical oil and gas exploration department would be any geoscientist or other related technical resource who is not an experienced or specialized data scientist, but who has a strong affinity with the particular datasets she or he is working on a daily basis.
At the upcoming DIGEX Conference, Aker BP will show how a hackathon format has been used on two occasions as a means to get geoscientists started with interacting more directly with subsurface data, thereby promoting more people from within the community to become a citizen data scientist.
