A modern drilling operation for the exploration and production of oil and natural gas generally involves a number of different organizations that are responsible for various aspects of the operation at a wellsite. For example, a variety of service companies and contractors may be used to provide specialized services related to the equipment that may be associated with a drilling rig at the wellsite. During the exploration or production operation, each of these service providers may need to share data related to its activities at the wellsite with one or more of the other service providers. Historically, the exchange or transfer of electronic data between different organizations in the oil and gas industry has been difficult. This difficulty has been primarily due to the use of propriety data formats and strict data access control policies, which may vary from one service company or contractor to another. For example, each service provider may use proprietary computer systems and data formats to collect and store wellsite data produced by various sources, e.g., instrumentation devices on a rig.
Furthermore, the computing devices of each service provider typically have limited network capabilities or only have access to other devices on a private network associated with that particular service provider. For security reasons, some devices used in the field and at the wellsite may be completely “locked down,” for example, by disabling all network capabilities and other means for transferring electronic data to other devices (e.g., access to external storage devices, such as through a serial data connection). With such a device, the only option for a service provider to transfer wellsite data from the device to another service provider is to produce a hard copy or printout of the wellsite data. The second service provider would then have to undertake the time-consuming process of manually entering the data into the appropriate computer system of the second provider.
A number of industry standard data formats, including the Wellsite Information Transfer Specification Markup Language (WTTMSL), have been developed to alleviate the need for service providers to support the proprietary formats of other providers. While these standards provide rig operators and oilfield service providers with a platform-independent data format for electronic wellsite data transfer, these standards fail to address the data transfer issues associated with devices that are locked down or have limited/restricted network connectivity or no access to external storage devices.