Big Data or Buzzword Bingo?

April 19, 2016

Published over a month ago, I just had the opportunity to read a fantastic article by Anya Litvak of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and thought it was worth sharing.  Titled “Shale companies turn to machines to crunch their drilling data,” Anya does a wonderful job of succinctly breaking down both the opportunities and the challenges of working with high-frequency, machine created data in the world of unconventionals.  Included in the article are highlights of the work of WVU’s Shahab Mohaghegh, a major SPE contributor and industry data scientist, and the efforts of major E&P’s and service companies like Shell, Range Resources, Southwestern, and Baker Hughes.

What do you think – is ‘Big Data’ an overused buzzword in our industry, or the beginnings of a smarter E&P “corporate brain,” as Neal Dikeman of Shell describes it?