|
AOGCC moves toward electronic commerce Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission expects to handle well logs electronically late this year, do some electronic permitting next year Kristen Nelson PNA News Editor
The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is heading toward electronic commerce and plans to have well logs up electronically by the end of the year.
The well logs will be a pilot program for electronic data handling for the commission, Chairman Bob Christenson told PNA. A good percentage of the well logs come in electronically, or we could get them that way, he said. “We haven’t had them in an integral system, which is what we’re working on now.”
The commission has some money in its budget for an electronic system, he said, and is building its system in incremental fashion, a step at a time. The well log pilot project is one such step.
Christenson said the commission has been working on electronic commerce for a long time. “We have several contracts out with various contractors looking at our business process and so we’re actively engaged in that,” he said.
The commission has also been evaluating a risk-based data management system, a relational data base developed by the Groundwater Protection Council with a Department of Energy grant. The council has been working on the system for a number of years, Christenson said, and the commission has been following its progress. There was a demonstration in Anchorage a month ago of the new system and how it had been modified and customized for Montana’s oil and gas association.
The commission really liked what it saw and is in the final stages of getting that system put in. Christenson said it should be done by year end.
Goal permitting and data submittal electronically That would be the foundation, he said, for getting the commission set up for electronic commerce. The commission’s goal, he said, is to do both permitting and data submittal electronically, and also have public records available electronically so that people don’t have to come into the commission’s offices to use them.
Christenson said it would probably be a year before permits can be filed electronically.
The commission has had a specialized reservoir evaluation product in house for a year or more. All of the data will eventually be tied in: well locations, well logs will be accessed by database. When you but the query in you’ll be able to go from a well down into all of the data, and the system will save both the public and commission staff from searching through paper files.
Once the commission has determined how it wants to operate electronically and has acquired the necessary software and hardware, it will have a web site where all of this can be handled with a geographic information system on the front end so that people can locate what they want.
Christenson said it will be a while before all of this work gets done, but there’s been a lot of effort put into it and the commission is well on its way to e-commerce.
| 