Multivendor data-exchange format to support digital oil fields

During the past decade, rapid evolution of information technology (IT) enabled oil companies to exploit hydrocarbon reserves more effectively than was possible before. These technologies rely on an extensive set of instrumentation and controls. This oilfield management is of value only by use of appropriate IT infrastructure and data-exchange protocols. A proposed data-exchange mechanism-production extended markup language (referred to here as PRODML)-can facilitate integration between software tools that are used in combination to turn raw production data into control actions.