Data Management Centre

For more informaton visit: www.cnsopbdmc.ca

The Board's digital Data Management Centre is the first data management centre in North America to offer free of charge publicly accessible digital offshore petroleum data via a web based interface. It is located in a dedicated computer room in the Board's newly expanded Geoscience Research Centre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The DMC provides for the submission, loading, management and distribution of entitled petroleum data. Initially, the DMC will manage and distribute the following digital petroleum data: well data (i.e. logs and reports), seismic image files (e.g. TIFF, PDF), Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data (e.g. licences, wells, bathymetry etc.) and production data. In the future the DMC could be expanded to include operational, safety, environmental, fisheries data, etc.

The DMC provides easy global access to quality data, significantly improving efficiency in obtaining and analyzing petroleum data, managing entitlements and reducing the cost of regulatory compliance for industry. Additional benefits of the DMC include prevention of data loss, reduction in data storage costs and facilitating scientific research by the regulatory Boards, industry, governments, universities, etc. The DMC is also intended to act as a "pilot project" in the establishment of a National Data Centre (NDC) for digital petroleum data, which eventually may link several regulatory Boards and government departments across Canada.

The DMC was officially opened on October 2, 2007 and data loading is ongoing. Schlumberger Information Solutions (SIS) designed, installed and configured the DMC hardware, software, and user workflows.

Disclosure of Technical Data

Sections 122 and 121, respectively, of the federal and provincial legislation deal with the confidentiality and disclosure of information provided for purposes of the legislation.

Information or documentation in respect of an exploratory well is held confidential for 2 years following the well termination date. The confidentiality period for a delineation well is 2 years following the termination date of the discovery well on the same prospect, or 90 days following the well termination date of the delineation well, whichever is longer. For a development well, the confidentiality period is 2 years following the termination date of the discovery well on the same prospect, or 60 days following the termination date of the development well, whichever is longer. General information on a well, including its name, operator, classification, location, identity of the drilling unit, depth, and operation status of the drilling program may be obtained from the Board on a current basis.

Information or documentation in respect to non-exclusive geophysical work is held confidential for at least 10 years following the completion date of the work. The geophysical regulations define a non-exclusive survey as a geophysical operation that is conducted to acquire data for the purpose of sale, in whole or in part, to the public.

Information and documentation in respect to exclusive geological or exclusive geophysical work is held confidential for a period of 5 years following the completion date of the work. The date of completion is considered to occur 6 months after the field program is terminated. Operators are required to submit comprehensive reports on each program in the offshore area. These reports, together with associated items such as interpretative maps, seismic sections, well logs, cores, cuttings, fluid samples and paleontological materials derived from such programs are held confidential for the requisite period, then disclosed for public examination.

For addition information, please contact:

John L. Martin
Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board
Geoscience Research Centre
201 Brownlow Avenue, Suite 27
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
B3B 1W2
Canada
Phone: (902) 496-3229
Fax: (902) 468-4584
E-mail: jmartin@cnsopb.ns.ca

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