Oscar Roldan, head of the National Data Repository for Mexico’s National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH), discusses the development of Mexico’s data libraries.
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One of CNH’s data rooms. Images from CNH. |
After almost 80 years with one operator in the country, Mexico finally opened its oil and gas potential to the private sector; the reform represents a huge challenge in terms of execution capabilities for Mexican institutions.
The new legal framework delegates the responsibility of the creation and managing of the National Data Repository of the country to the National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH). The first step towards it implies the transfer of all the geological, geophysical, geochemical and petrophysical data generated in the country from Pemex and the Mexican Petroleum Institute to CNH within a period of two years.
The next step is how to grant access to the data for every company that is interested. There are three ways to access the data:
1. Data packs of the bid rounds.
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Virtual data display. |
The first three phases of round one had a data pack that contained all the technical data relevant to present an economic proposal. CNH delivered 132 data packs in total for the first three bids, containing information for more than 1200 wells, 35 seismic 3D surveys and 26 seismic 2D surveys.
As an additional service to the data pack, CNH built a physical data room where companies could come and see all the data integrated in a specialized platform to visualize and analyze the data, within the first three phases of Round One we had 184 visits from companies all over the world.
Finally, companies that pay for the data pack could also access the data through the web via our virtual data room (login and password required), in which they could download all the data, except the seismic data.
2. License system.
As a way to access the data without being in a tender, CNH launched a regulation to provide access to any company interested to the data through a license system. Companies have to request access to the data by filling out CNH’s form and paying the related fees. The whole process takes no longer than two weeks, from the moment that we receive the request to the moment we actually deliver the data.
The data that we have available at the moment is all the data from the deep water Gulf of Mexico: 20 seismic 3D surveys, covering more than 160,000sq km; and 55 exploration wells. Within the first five months since we published the regulation, CNH granted 17 licenses to different oil and gas companies and delivered 23 different sets of data.
3. MultiClient system.
One of the new elements of the E&P industry are the authorizations for superficial exploration that CNH can grant to the companies interested in the acquisition of new data or reprocessing of existing data. So far, CNH has granted 28, from which 19 are related to the acquisition of new data and nine to the reprocessing of existing data.
There is still a long way to go, but the CNH is convinced that one key element for success is to develop the information industry in the country. The more information outside, the better understanding of the oil and gas resources of the country.
Oscar Roldán is the head of the National Data Repository for Mexico’s National Hydrocarbons Commission. His career started in 2001 at the Ministry of Finance, where he was part of the team involved on the new fiscal regime for Pemex. In 2007, while in the Ministry of Energy, he participated in the first energy reform and, in 2009, he was part of the founding members of the National Hydrocarbons Commission.
Oscar holds a BA in economics from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and a master’s degree in statistics and econometrics from University of Essex, in the UK.
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