The Gazprom Neft Science and Technology Centre has created a unique IT system — “ERA: ProActive” for the integrated data analysis of hydrocarbon reserves. Cognitive algorithms built into the programme facilitate the timely evaluation of confirmed reserves and forward planning in developing major and new assets, with multiple factors taken into account. The programme optimises up to 90 percent of routine operations in analysing reserves.

Data on Gazprom Neft’s resource base includes the results of thousands of investigations since 1981 — i.e., information on reserve volumes, assets’ geological features, and the physical and chemical properties of oil and gas. Evaluating that amount of data in addressing ongoing tasks has, hitherto, taken up a large part of working time.

The ERA: ProActive programme makes it possible to optimise the resource base and put in place a strategy for its further development. The programme includes constantly updated information on all company assets. Based on a comprehensive production forecast, and an overview of the current status of the business’s resource base, algorithms have been developed that make it possible to take a balanced approach to replenishing reserves, maintaining and expanding production at an asset in the long term.

The new tool will help geologists, developers, economists, production managers and government agencies in addressing the issues they face, with the tool adaptable for any database, including a nationwide one.

The project is being undertaken as part of the company’s “ERA” technology initiative,* with St Petersburg State University partnering the project in developing software. The programme — and the corresponding trademark — have been registered with the Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent).