What does Petrolink do?

Petrolink is the leading independent company in the industry for data management, collection, preservation, and surveillance. We are independent because other companies involved in well drilling have their own software and tools in the field. We are there only to collect and preserve the data and provide an independent view of all other parties. We operate in over 50 countries, providing real-time infrastructure for Saudi Aramco in the Middle East and a significant amount of infrastructure for Pemex in real-time as well. In some parts of the world, we offer consulting services such as interpretation analysis, but our main and fundamental work is data management in the drilling area. The company is growing very fast and has around 1,000 employees.

What are the main features of PetroVault?

PetroVault is our centralized management system where we collect and store all our data. It has several subsidiary components. One of them is PetroVault Console, which allows you to view all data in real-time with graphs and tables. The other star component is the analysis engine, which allows you to take real-time and historical data and enhance it with algorithms and processes to produce greater clarity about the information. The main advantage of PetroVault is that it provides a consistent view of real-time data. If an oil company has a service provider ‘A’ working on one well and a service provider ‘B’ working on another well, the company’s engineers will have to evaluate the different tools that have been used to collect data. Using PetroVault, you have all these data in the same visual format at all times.

In some markets, such as Mexico, customers value not only that we provide data collection technology, but also that we track the data flow from the point of acquisition and do so from a neutral point of view. We provide confidence that the data shown is the actual data coming from the well.

What are the advantages of standardizing data management?

A European oil company conducted a survey and found that they were using 325 technical applications that had no communication with each other whatsoever. From an operator’s perspective, they have an absolute chaos in terms of data management. An integrated solution like PetroVault solves a significant part of this problem.

How do you ensure the security of customer data?

Companies are extremely concerned about data security. In some cases, we see direct opposition to entering the cloud. Several of the large oil companies and national oil companies do not allow data to leave their network. Never. One of the challenges I see is the awareness that this data is of vital importance to the health of Mexico, so it needs to be treated in absolute secrecy.