GIM Suite Used for Complex Oil Sands Projects

For Canada’s oil sands producers, maintaining costs is fundamental to the long-term viability of current projects.

Total E&P Canada uses Geoscientific Information Management (GIM) as an essential tool to increase the profitability of their oil sands exploration and production.

Marc Nolte, Total’s previous GeoInformation Manager, was tasked with normalising lab analysis documents for Total’s Joslyn asset. In order to do this, his team conformed thousands of documents to capture Joslyn’s legacy data. The team’s challenge was to find new GIM software that was fully automated and included models of bore holes for sand, water and oil with workflows for managing the information.

“acQuire Technology Solutions’ GIM Suite fully satisfied our requirements,” says Nolte.

“We found that we could easily load data from Excel spreadsheets into the Suite which made our processes more efficient.”

Workflows to support loading, quality assurance and quality control are fully automated. Modules for reporting and displaying data are easy to use, and the vital GADAMA data format is supported so that Total can share software and data throughout the organisation, with its affiliates and subsidiaries.

GIM observations

As the team began to use the acQuire GIM Suite, they observed that the GIM Suite allows for a well-developed data model with built-in workflows that are easily customised to suit specific business rules, QA/QC procedures, and requirements that are specifically implemented  to manage geoscientific information. Because of the documented data migration process, data is preserved through an audit trail that traces back to the origin, even in the event of staff movement.

Costs savings and productivity gains

As a result of the acQuire GIM Suite, Total has been able to decrease costs and substantially increase productivity.

“We’ve had really good support from the local acQuire team. Costs have not escalated. New product is being offered all the time. The acQuire GIM Solution has been good value for us,” Nolte concludes.

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