Unlock subsurface data
Solution Guides
Storing, retrieving, and analyzing energy subsurface information across a variety of different form factors (large maps, well logs, drawings, tape, seismic sections) is a daunting challenge.
Challenge
The Energy industry has been collecting vast amounts of subsurface data for more than 50 years. Storing, retrieving, and analyzing this information across a variety of different formats and systems of record (tapes, large maps, long well logs, seismic sections, etc.) has proven to be a daunting challenge. Driving strategic decisions is often difficult because both the format and the locations of the data are not easily accessible and the processes for searching through the data are still often manual.
Impact
Exploration relies on precise, data-driven decisions due to the high costs of drilling. Low carbon businesses and new energy planning initiatives are looking to leverage legacy data, rather than acquiring new data. However, accessing and understanding this data is difficult. Legacy physical formats conflict with newer formats, and offsite storage and compatibility issues hinder analysis. As a result, companies are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to uncover, manage, and analyze the treasure trove of subsurface and enterprise data they own.
What if you could
Access and analyze massive, distributed, and incongruent data sets to help your organization:
- Digitize disorganized and physically distanced information to speed analysis through automated AI pipelines and tools
- Drive operational efficiency for a more productive global workforce
- Reduce access time of legacy data using AI, driving better decision making
Iron Mountain Subsurface Data Discovery solution with Katalyst Data Management
The Subsurface Data Discovery solution, offered in partnership with Katalyst, provides access to dark legacy subsurface data by scanning paper logs and documents and transcribing seismic tapes, indexing the digitized assets via an enhanced Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) pipeline, and delivering the data on Katalyst’s iGlass portal, now enhanced with an AI assistant.
Digitize and reduce your footprint: Iron Mountain imaging centers in energy hubs worldwide operate with specialized equipment to digitize documents such as well logs, maps, and seismic sections, in large volumes. Katalyst offers a complete set of tape transcription and remastering services from bit-for-bit copy, reformatting, and demultiplexing of old legacy formats, to standard SEGY. By digitizing and transcribing your subsurface data archives, we help you reduce footprint and storage costs with defensible destruction.
Supercharge your legacy data: Integrated AI/ML processing pipeline in Iron Mountain InSight® Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is used to classify and extract metadata from legacy seismic reports, seismic sections, well reports, well logs, maps, and drawings, along with tape labels and EBCDIC headers compliant with PPDM taxonomies. Digital native unstructured content is processed in the same way. Reduce time, effort, and errors when organizing your digital content, ensuring consistency and governance across data types.
GenAI technology for the Geosciences: This solution leverages the latest genAI technology from leading providers to open the world of your subsurface data. Large Language Models (LLM) foundation models are fine-tuned to build the processors that classify images and extract key metadata in the asset enrichment process. The AI Assistant on Katalyst’s iGlass is purpose-built to interrogate datasets across all your subsurface legacy data assets.
Katalyst’s iGlass provides a rich map-based UI to search and inspect data across seismic, wells, and other project data. All your subsurface data is on one platform and ready to be discovered through a web-based ESRI map designed especially for managing subsurface data and Certified PPDM Gold Compliant.
Clear business benefits
Energy businesses can realize clear benefits by deploying the Iron Mountain Subsurface Data Discovery solution.
- Better visibility: Enable your organization to see all aspects of your subsurface domain. Regardless of the format or structure, your data can be pulled together to enable a much better understanding of the information that geoscientists need to analyze and identify hidden opportunities.
- Higher efficiency: Empower your teams to focus on value-adding tasks, rather than organizing data. Iron Mountain’s numerous high-speed scanning supercenters and secure chain of custody ensure your valuable data continues to be protected while being digitized and quality controlled. The enhanced AI/ML processing pipeline automates classification and metadata extraction from legacy records reducing the amount of manual work required during indexing.
- Improved decision making: Drive more revenue and savings by making more informed decisions about well, reservoir, and other subsurface elements to support your E&P and your low carbon and new energies initiatives. Replace guesswork and theory with action and results through a genAI-fueled search capability that opens new perspectives and delivers deeper results.
How Iron Mountain and Katalyst Data Management work together
Our strong alliances with industry-leading partners like Katalyst Data Management allow Iron Mountain to deliver a proven end-to-end solution for energy companies to re-use their dark legacy subsurface data as they transform and leverage the opportunities in asset consolidations and the energy transition.
Business challenge
Storing, retrieving, and analyzing energy subsurface information across a variety of different form factors (large maps, well logs, drawings, tape, seismic sections) is a daunting challenge. Driving strategic decisions is often difficult because both the format and location of data, like well locations, is not easily accessible.
Impact
- Natural resource exploration demands precise data-driven decisions due to the high cost of drilling. This data is also crucial for mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, impacting every part of the business.
- Accessing and understanding energy subsurface data is challenging. Old physical formats clash with the flood of new digital data. Offsite storage and compatibility issues with current analysis models further hinder access to information.
- The task of finding reliable data from multiple sources is daunting, especially when rapid analysis is needed. Unstructured data storage, manual processes, and global operations add to these complexities.
What if you could
Access and analyze massive, distributed and incongruent datasets to help your organization:
- Digitize disorganized and physically distanced information to speed analysis
- Drive operational efficiency for a more productive global workforce
- Reduce access time to legacy subsurface data, driving better decision making
Iron Mountain Upstream Subsurface Data solution
Iron Mountain is the trusted partner for energy companies. Our Upstream Subsurface Data solution, offered with Katalyst Data Management, enables you to:
Explore
Digitize legacy assets
Gain visibility into massive stores of unstructured legacy energy data by digitizing key information and making it available in Katalyst’s iGlass software. Geoscientists can now visually seek insights, often uncovering previously lost or miscategorized subsurface data. The timely access to this unified data can drive faster strategic decisions with more confidence.
Improve operations
Improve operations
Organizations can drive better operational efficiency by unifying their subsurface data into a single platform. The Upstream Subsurface solution aids retrieval, preparation, digitization, classification, and quality control of subsurface data records and documents across multiple geographic locations, consolidating subsurface data.
Preserve knowledge
Preserve knowledge
With a digital auditable chain of custody and secure warehouses, our project teams can help you reduce the footprint and administrative costs associated with storing and retrieving data by including filterable metadata. We do this by converting physical documents, tape, and other data formats into easily searchable data to help maximize revenue generation.
Upstream energy businesses can realize clear benefits with:
- Get better visibility: Enable your organization to see broader aspects of your data. Regardless of the format or structure, your massive collection of unstructured data can be accessible and organized, enabling better understanding of the information that allows a geoscientist to analyze and identify hidden opportunities.
- Increase efficiency: Focus efforts where they can truly deliver the best performance. Iron Mountain’s high-speed scanning supercenters and logistics coordination can help boost productivity by offloading routine tasks where Iron Mountain excels.
- Improved decision making: Let the value of digitally connected information drive smarter decisions faster. Accelerate your business opportunities and turn your existing information assets into a stronger and more predictable revenue stream.
Contact Iron Mountain to learn how we can help optimize your energy enterprise, accelerating efficiency and higher velocity. To see a demo, reach out to an Iron Mountain expert.
Featured services & solutions
Industry fact
Iron Mountain manages more than 40M of cataloged assets including over 5M cubic feet of paper records and more than 2M cubic feet of drilling cores, along with cuttings, slides, and tapes across U.S., Canada, Norway, and Australia
Elevate the power of your work
Get a FREE consultation today!
Related resources
View More ResourcesView More Resources
