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Knowledge Management: the Future of Decision Making

David González - Net Brains
Managing Partner

STORY INLINE POST

Wed, 01/20/2016 - 12:30

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“Net Brains worked with the PEMEX teams responsible for each project, so we got to see how each team evolved, enabling us to follow the developments in their strategies. I believe it is this experience that differentiates us from other companies in the Mexican landscape,” shares David González Sánchez, Managing Partner at Net Brains. He claims Net Brains can assess whether a company’s plan is the most appropriate or counterproductive, advising clients from a geological and geophysical (G&G) engineering perspective. “We are providing the interpretation, characterization, and the general geological and geophysical aspect, after which we are able to define the desired outlook of our client’s optimal portfolio, an analysis few companies can complete,” says González Sánchez, pointing out that this enabled the company to work with some of the winners of R1-L01 in assessing the tendered blocks, as well as some other blocks in the northern region.

In order to address issues caused by lack of data frequencies, Net Brains is using a tool called bandwidth extension that can help improve the images of the subsurface. This can either be applied to the poststacked data or the pre-stacked data to generate a clearer image, a wider range of frequencies, and a wider range of amplitudes. “This way, we can provide tools that help the companies understand which reservoirs have the geological characteristics they are seeking, and many of the features that players wanted, including images on a vertical scale and a horizontal scale,” González Sánchez explains. After the interpretation, surveys that subtract some of the frequencies and the amplitudes can be created to represent some of the geological features they are seeking. “We are using a tool from one of our partners called geomodeling, through which spectral analysis is used as the main tool, rather than the inversion, which is used as a secondary tool. With this method we can combine the information with rock physics data to move forward on the modeling that must be done.”

For the next three years, Net Brains will be focusing its energy on knowledge management. Net Brains does not advise clients on investment opportunities, but rather it seeks to help them accurately assess the value of projects of interest, using hard facts and global benchmarking. In this sense, the knowledge management system can be used for exploration, an area where many opportunities are left unexploited. “Take the first deepwater discovery as an example,” says González Sánchez. “It was not made by someone who had been working in the deepwater fields of the Gulf for a long time, but rather, by a geologist working in the Canadian Rockies. Short-sightedness does not usually allow people working on the spot to come up with a new idea. This is how our knowledge management system can help in exploration.” Net Brains’ knowledge management system allows the company to constantly expand its knowledge base, enabling the company to make more appropriate decisions. Given its advantages, González Sánchez hopes this technology will be of interest to PEMEX.

One of Net Brains’ ambitions is to be a technology and services partner to CNH. González believes the Commission has brought in knowledgeable people throughout its evolutions in spite of it being new and still undergoing a learning process. “If CNH implements the ideas of its new and promising hires, then the organization’s shape can change a lot in a positive way,” he asserts. “We are seeking to help PEMEX and CNH, and make them understand that working together can go a long way. By now, both organizations have grasped that working hand in hand is mutually advantageous, with PEMEX wanting to rebrand itself and forget about its old image. For its part, CNH wants to show that it can properly regulate the assets it is managing.”

Deepwaters will play an important role for the company, which has considerable experience in interpretation, according to González Sánchez. He believes that the technology it has today will be utilized broadly both by PEMEX and the operators that will enter the country. In González’ view, his company’s services will eventually turn into a commodity, so he aims to digitalize part of Net Brains’ intelligence. The company has been studying new technologies that allow for this sort of competitive offering and, in just three years, Net Brains should already be providing some of its services digitally and on-demand. Only part of the process will become digitalized, with both problem identification and implementation remaining a human task, but problem solving will be done through a digital assistant. “Giving people fast access to data and analytics empowers them to make better decisions, and we believe this is the future industry,” González asserts.

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