NATIONAL DATA REPOSITORY

NATIONAL DATA REPOSITORY

Subject : Economy

Context : Given the need to accelerate hydrocarbon explorations in the country, the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas is considering creating an autonomous body that will mine the data, which is the key for improving India’s strike rate in the sector.

Concept :

• At present, all data acquired from exploration and production (E&P) activities in sedimentary basins of the country is stored in the National Data Repository (NDR) in Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH).
• Ministry intends to create an autonomous body, in the form of a society registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 which will retain the brand name of ‘National Data Repository’.

National Data Repository

• The National Data Repository (NDR) is an integrated data repository of Exploration and Production (E&P) data of Indian sedimentary basins.
• It is hosted at Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) in Noida. The DGH is a technical arm of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG).
• The repository offers a unique platform to all E&P Operators, E&P Service Companies, E&P Investors and Academia to delve inside diverse E&P datasets of Indian sedimentary basins.
• It is a step towards fulfilment of the Union Government’s ambitious project, which includes setting up of a National Knowledge Hub (NKH) alternatively called as National Knowledge Centre (NKC) in E&P area in coming few years.
• The main objective is to set up National Data Repository of reliable exploration and production data for India with provisions for seamless access and online data management.

Proposed Autonomous Body

• It is set up by the government for a specific purpose. It is independent in day-to-day functioning, but the government has some control over them.
• The government funds them in some way — revenue expenditure, capital expenditure, or both.
• The proposed branded NDR will enable acquisition and dissemination of exploration data to all stakeholders.
• The intent is to transform NDR to scale up efficiency in data management, share E&P data with wider section of stakeholders, promote exploration activities by providing latest data to update resource mapping, trigger quality data generation and mature into a database platform where data science methods including big data analytics can be used to gain subsurface understanding and mitigate risks in exploration.
• According to officials, the proposed NDR will generate, validate, archive, preserve, reproduce and disseminate all data and samples relating to prospecting, exploration, development and production of hydrocarbons.
• The body will also promote and facilitate data disclosure, data reporting, data exchange and data trading between the Central Government or its nominee and other parties.
• The proposed body will also create and maintain a modern platform for effective application of data analytics, reporting, mapping, and visualization techniques.
• It will also encourage new prospecting, exploration, development and production activities by providing high quality and reliable geo-scientific and engineering data.