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The Professional Petroleum Data Management (PPDM) Association  is a Calgary-based, global, not-for-profit organization, that develops data management standards for the petroleum industry. The Association includes corporate, individual, and contributing members. The member’s collaborate in an open, vendor neutral framework. The PPDM Association seeks to develop and improve business-driven standards, including:


 * Building a comprehensive, relational petroleum data model
 * Building baseline definitions for well components
 * Defining consistent well status terms and classification
 * Defining business rules
 * Defining best practices for handling petroleum data

Members of the PPDM Association collaborate to define terminology and practices, for most petroleum related data. Over the last twenty years, the PPDM Association has developed a standard data model (technical architecture for storing data) with 1710 tables in 53 subject areas. The Association also develops standards in data management practices, including standards for nomenclature, data integrity, and guidelines on how to develop rules for data.

Origin & Growth
The Professional Petroleum Data Management Association developed from a need to organize the inconsistencies of petroleum data, and the management of that data.

Throughout the processes of exploration and production, the petroleum industry generates vast quantities of technical information. Over decades, and for every well that is drilled (or not drilled), the industry gathers and analyzes large volumes of data, such as:


 * Seismic data
 * Land (both surface and sub-surface)
 * Well drilling and operations data
 * Well logs
 * Well tests
 * Well cores
 * Production volumes
 * Reserves data
 * Legal agreements
 * Financial transactions
 * Regulatory filings
 * Environmental data

Historically, petroleum data has been built upon vendor or in-house specifications, and therefore the data is managed by different proprietary systems. These systems, (which are typically based on local terminology and business needs) use different practices for identifying, gathering, transferring, and interpreting information. These different practices make integration across disciplines a very difficult task.

A typical operating company may use dozens or even hundreds of software applications. Additionally, each application may cater to a different segment of the company. For example, production accounting, field operations, seismic exploration, reserves management, and financial departments may use the data for different purposes. For example, if ten different people (within a single company) were shown an illustration of a typical well configuration, each person would identify and describe the components of the well differently.

Differences in practice result in an even greater diversity in industry terms; Defining consistent terms, across the petroleum industry, makes integration difficult. A striving company that seeks to integrate their business and technical systems (even within its own company) may find that differences in semantics pose a difficult challenge.

In an effort to confront data model inconsistencies in the industry a group of four companies worked together starting in 1989. The Public Petroleum Data Model Association incorporated in 1991 (as a not for profit society in Calgary, Alberta) by a group of petroleum industry data experts, who were focused on standardizing practices in petroleum data management.

PPDM data model version 1.0, created by four individuals from four different companies, included 70 tables for well data management.

In recent years, operating companies, data vendors, software developers, regulatory agencies, and consultants (anyone who bases their data management strategies on open standards) have used PPDM data model versions 3.7 and 3.8 in their implementations.

In 2008, the Association changed its name from the Public Petroleum Data Model Association to the Professional Petroleum Data Management Association to reflect its role in stewarding effective data management practices and standards within industry.

Since 1995, the PPDM Association has provided training and education for data managers; this program is currently being broadened to include the data management principles endorsed by DAMA International.

PPDM Standards
PPDM adheres to a set of fundamental principles, and builds the model and practices on these cornerstones.
 * PPDM 3.8 – a relational data model consisting of 1710 tables in 53 subject areas.
 * What is a Well – an interactive web based tool that illustrates and describes typical well components. http://www.whatisawell.org
 * Well Status – an interactive tool that defines and describes the fourteen key facets included in well status, and provides a common plot symbol set.
 * Taxonomy and Classification – this document describes the 16 most common taxonomic classifications used by the Oil and Gas industry for classifying records and other materials. http://www.ppdm.org/wiki/index.php/Taxonomy_Dimensions