Structured and unstructured data systems have been put in place over the past decade. Now the question is what can be done with the data?

Derek Garland, president of Houston-based WellDrive, said: “We like to employ a combination of artificial intelligence and actual intelligence. We have computers and software that is built to help determine what needs to be used, where that data is going to come from. How to fill in gaps and how to make decisions on that. But, we aren’t quite good enough to do that on our own so we have our own operations people with engineers and geologists and other professionals that can use their experience to combine their actual experience with the artificial intelligence to be able to help make better decisions tomorrow."

History of WellDrive

In 2008 the unconventional play was getting off the ground. The Barnett and Fayetteville were the hot new plays. The Eagle Ford, Haynesville, Marcellus and Bakken were starting to be talked about. Horizontal drilling and big fracs would become the new normal. The problem was, how do you capture all of this data and where do you put it? The wells had a lot of stakeholders and a lot of service companies that all needed the data. So, everyone set up massive email distribution lists to stay on the same page. But you couldn’t send big files, and it was hard to maintain special distribution lists. Files were generated so quickly that things were getting missed and stored incorrectly. People didn’t have access to the shared files they need.  

Web-based storage mechanisms were insecure and not designed for the oil and gas industry. WellDrive, formerly Digital Well File, was developed to address all of these problems. Using a web-based platform, WellDrive addressed the issues of dealing with large files, large quantity of files, and the lack of security. It was even made cost-effective. There was still an issue of making sure that everything was captured and properly stored. WellDrive assembled an operations team to monitor all of the wells, read all of the daily reports, and called all of the service companies to help them upload the reports and files. A few forward-thinking companies saw the value early on to help their engineers, geologists, landmen and technicians free up days worth of time every month and solve all of the headaches of trying to deliver data to partners.

Today, the WellDrive community and capabilities continue to grow. The company captures, warehouses and distributes well files for about 10% of the active rigs in the U.S., as well as data for over 1,500 companies.

For more on WellDrive and its services visit info.welldrive.com.