UGANDA | PETROLIUM | RESARCHERS

Availing petroleum data to researchers can enable them to make it more useful, Petroleum Authority of Uganda executive director Ernest Rubondo has said.

Rubondo says there is a need to make petroleum data accessible to researchers, especially those in African universities to undertake more studies that can make the data more valuable to the countries that own it. 

He made the call during the 7th African Petroleum Data Management Forum Conference (APDMF), which was officially opened yesterday November 30, 2022. This was at the Commonwealth Resort, Munyonyo in Kampala.

APDMF comprises representatives from key government entities from different countries concerned with policy, regulatory and commercial aspects of the sector. This forum provides an opportunity for benchmarking best practices while sharing experiences among the countries and institutions represented. 

Rubondo challenged the participants to chart a way forward on how African countries can make petroleum data more valuable and accessible to those that wish to make use of it. 

The increase in data volume comes with the challenges of efficiently managing the data and efficiently using it to make decisions hence the important need to leverage the 4th Industrial Revolution technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and big data analytics. Leveraging technologies comes with huge investments in both technologies and human resources.  

APDMF is an annual conference organized by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) in conjunction with the petroleum regulatory body of the host country. 

NPD project director Sjøgren Gunnar said this year’s theme: Seven Years of Co-operation in Petroleum Data Management: Looking to the future, is aimed at helping the countries the NPD co-operates with to leverage how best they can use their petroleum data. 

“Today marks seven years since we started this collaboration. As you can all see, we have come a long way and much as we didn’t meet physically for the last two years because of COVID-19, we are happy to be where it all started”, Gunnar said. 

This year’s ADMF has participants from eight countries that have a cooperation agreement for support on data management and storage with NPD. These include Norway, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, Sudan, Zanzibar, and Uganda. 

“Our philosophy is to build capacity and competence in all countries willing to collaborate with us." "And this we have done with Uganda and the other countries willing to learn from our experiences on how best to manage their oil resources,” Gunnar said. 

He went on to say that when they first began working with Uganda, all data was stored in analog format, but the country was assisted in establishing a digital database. 

Uganda is now in the development phase of the oil and gas value chain, which includes the setting up of development, production, processing, and transportation facilities. 

Vast quantities of data are, therefore, expected from the drilling of over 450 development wells in the Kingfisher and Tilenga development projects, as well as from the refinery and the East African Crude Oil Pipeline projects. The data is expected to be transmitted in real-time from the oil fields and infrastructure projects to the planned Real Time Monitoring Centre (RTMC) at PAU’s offices in Entebbe. 

Rubondo added that as the custodian of Uganda’s petroleum and other related data, the authority manages over 50 terabytes of data. A significant portion of this data was acquired during the oil and gas exploration phase.   

“The electronic data volumes are expected to increase from 50 to 650 Terabytes at the start of oil production in 2025, rising to over 1 Petabyte in 2026,” he added. 

Quoting British mathematician Clive Humby who coined the phrase, “Data is the new oil” Rubondo said it is true that the oil industry is heavily reliant on the use of data to inform decision-making. It is also true that just like oil, for data to be useful, it must be processed and applied efficiently. 

Daniel Arthur, a data management specialist at the Petroleum Commission of Ghana lauded Uganda for properly managing and storing its petroleum data, which has enabled it to progress to the development and production phases. 

“Uganda has done extremely well. We have collaborated with them closely and you can see that they easily correlate the old data acquired with the new data. We share everyday experiences, resources, and challenges of data management,” Arthur said.