In today's digital age, transforming the management of natural resources requires more than merely preserving historical knowledge; it demands afull-scale shift from digitization to digitalization. Digitization is converting physical documents into digital formats, while digitalization involves applying context to the digitized data, transforming it into a valuable resource. This transition is essential for creating a sustainable approach to exploiting natural resources while reducing carbonization, minimizing environmental impact, and fostering community awareness. Specifically, creating a cloud-based digital database for Venezuela's geological data can serve as a model for countries to digitize their resources for greater transparency, collaboration, and sustainability.
The goal is to digitize over a century's physical documents—technical reports, geological maps, conference papers, and academic research—and implement a digitalization process that categorizes and contextualizes this data. This transformation will enable the energy and natural resource sectors to make data-driven decisions that reflect historical trends and learn from past experiences.
Building a Culture of Collaboration
A core objective of the project is to foster a culture of collaboration among geoscientists, engineers, academics, government agencies, and the private sector from service and operators seeking quality and validated data resources. Also, increasing transparency allows various stakeholders to participate through funding to access digital resources that can influence decision-making.
This project envisions a process in the first phase where more than 17,000 physical publications are in PDF format (digital), representing over 100 years of petroleum exploration and production history available only in Spanish and restricted to few public and private hands. But digitization is only the first step. The goal is digitalization: integrating advanced data technologies to preserve information and make it valuable and actionable for the future and moving beyond the static preservation of data to a more dynamic digital environment, where Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) could interact with the data in real-time and search and extract valuable information.
Some of the publications in PDF file format, scanned page by page, contain more than 800 pages, including multiple papers associated with different geographical areas and subjects, that could only be reached if you had availability to access a physical book. Also, many publications have not been used for research due to be unknow its existence or lack of access in the professional community.
The Process: From Physical Books to Digitization and Digitalization
The proposed process for digitization and digitalization follows a structured path:
- Digitization: Converting physical publications—books, reports, maps, and pictures—into digital formats. This involves scanning documents to extract text and images and transforming them into searchable, structured data.
- Digitalization: The second step involves applying context to the digitized data, transforming it into a valuable resource. We enable more efficient searches and analyses by categorizing information based on parameters such as geoscience topics (maps, logs, seismic sections, stratigraphic sections, graphs, tables), geographic regions, basins, reservoirs, fields, and years of publication.
- Digital transformation for supporting the workforce: the third phase is to integrate with a digital platform with advanced technologies for leverage insights using data analytics and cloud computer.
A pilot project is on the way and shows great promise. Initial tests on off-the-shelf models reveal high accuracy in extracting text and images and identifying geographical locations within the documents. By incorporating metadata like footnotes, geographic references, and the year of publication, we can provide contextualized information for those seeking specific insights.
Incorporating Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
Subject matter experts (SMEs) are not just participants in the digitalization phase, they are the key to its success. Their expertise in geology, geophysicist, geodesy, engineering, and environmental science is instrumental in classifying, validate and assign data to a system, to make it relevant for oil and gas distribution in a basin, understanding of petroleum system, reservoir management, field development, offshore exploration, etc. SMEs also provide critical insight into past experiences and methodologies, aiding in identifying new opportunities left behind due to the unavailability of current technology, cost, and time. Their role is not just important, it's indispensable.
Furthermore, SMEs' role extends to performing a risk gap analysis and understanding experiences on the operations in past activities, such as oil spills or overpressure reservoirs in complex geology, for example. It could help to reshape insight knowledge for future safe and secure operations. By incorporating this analysis into the digital platform, we can provide a comprehensive tool for evaluating the sustainability of future projects.
Benefits of the Project
The benefits of this project go beyond digitizing historical documents. This initiative provides a host of advantages for a range of future stakeholders:
- Professionals and Industry Leaders: The cloud-based repository will be a rich resource for geologists, engineers, and petroleum executives looking to learn from Venezuela's oil exploration history.
- Universities and Research Institutions: The platform will become acritical tool for academic research and innovation by offering access to over a century of geological data.
- Government Agencies and Policy makers: With greater access to historical data, government bodies can make more informed decisions regarding exploiting natural resources, focusing on sustainability, and minimizing environmental impacts.
- Local Communities: This project will bring awareness and transparency, allowing local populations to be more engaged in discussions around the environmental and social impacts of resource exploitation. They can also contribute to shaping more sustainable policies and practices, empowering them to have a voice in their community's future.
Unlocking Decades of Potential: Venezuela as an Example Despite the challenges, the potential for success in Venezuela's natural resource sector is vast. By embracing digital transformation, the country can pave the way for a more sustainable and successful future.
According to a 2024 analysis by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Venezuela's oil production has experienced a sharp and sustained decline over the past decade, falling from around 2.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2015 to less than 700,000 bpd by 2023. This decline is primarily due to economic mismanagement, sanctions, and underinvestment in infrastructure. Additionally, Venezuela holds one of the largest oil reserves in the world, yet its production capacity has been severely underutilized. The natural gas sector, while promising, also faces challenges from insufficient infrastructure and investment; in our view, the digital transformation has stayed behind oil and gas producer countries, becoming desirable for investment for commercial success despite the geological risk.
The U3 Explore Venezuela Project exemplifies how geology knowledge and the public information digitization can transform the accessibility and usability of geological data, making it a vital resource for operators, investors, and policymakers. The current use of the information has been crucial in supporting the U3D web application content (available by company subscription) for describing reservoir properties and oil and gas fields in Venezuela, for GIS digitalization of fields and reservoirs, and for understanding the history of production and the current decline in production.
By making geological data more accessible, this digital repository will enable stakeholders to assess past exploration and production strategies, identify missed opportunities, and plan future development more effectively. The digital transformation is essential for improving digital oil and gas sector, which is struggling to recover amidst economic and operational challenges.
Moreover, this project aims to serve as a digital repository for Venezuela's oil and gas data and a potential model for other resource-richcountries facing similar challenges. The project fosters collaboration between the public and private sectors by unlocking private collections and consolidating them into a centralized cloud-based platform. This platform could help advance research, promote innovation, and improve public understanding of the natural resource sector, paving the way for more efficient and sustainable resource management on the surface and subsurface. The potential of this project to inspire change on a global scale is immense.
The transition from digitization to digitalization is more than just a technical upgrade; it's a fundamental shift in how we manage and share knowledge. Venezuela's oil and gas sector is at a critical juncture, and the U3 Explore Venezuela Project can play a crucial role in revitalizing the industry by enabling data-driven decision-making and investment strategies. The urgency to improve conditions and boost production cannot be overstated, especially as the country faces significant economic pressures and the world moves toward amore sustainable energy future. By creating a cloud-based, digitally categorized database for Venezuela's geological data, this project sets a precedent for countries seeking digital transformation in the natural resource sector in Latin America and Africa. It promotes sustainable practices, encourages collaboration, and provides access to invaluable data, unlocking potential for future generations while ensuring transparency and environmental responsibility.
About U3 EXPLORE Venezuela Project
The U3 Explore Venezuela Project, initiated by U3 Explore and Actus Veritas Geoscience, is a pioneering effort to preserve and digitally consolidate Venezuela's extensive geological knowledge. Since its founding in 2019, the project has focused on gathering, validating, and classifying public information into a structured, contextual format to ensure this valuable data is maintained for future generations. The initiative aims to evolve into a Sustainable Development Data Center (SDDC), envisioned as a comprehensive digital hub that centralizes knowledge on Venezuela's natural resources, supporting the country's energy and environmental sectors.
For 2024-2025, the project sets critical goals:
- Securing Ownership and Funding: Establishing sustainable financial management with the private sector to ensure the project's long-term viability.
- We are delivering Peer-Reviewed Data, collaborating with global experts to validate and enhance the quality of datasets.
- We offer Mentorship and Collaboration: Building partnerships across Venezuela's energy industry to foster innovation and knowledge sharing and connecting them with international partners.
- Aligning with Sustainable Practices and decarbonization: Integrating strategies that align with global efforts toward low-carbon solutions and energy transitions.
Through the U3D Web Application available by subscription and U3 Explore Venezuela projects, which include the digitalization of geospatial basins, fields and reservoirs of Venezuela, our team aims to reduce uncertainty in onshore and offshore production and exploration in oil and gas, help to optimize hydrocarbon recovery, and contribute to the revitalization of Venezuela's energy sector while supporting decarbonization efforts and informed business decisions. More information contact us at info@u3explore.com
Learn more:
2020, Story of Venezuelan geology told by Francia Galea Alvarez
2020, Sustainable Development Data Center (SDDC) for Venezuela by Marel Sanchez
2024, Framework for statistical analysis for assessment of return on investment in Venezuela by Katya Casey
2024, A New Contextual framework to reinvigorate the oil and gas industry of Venezuela by Juan Francisco Arminio
2024, U3Explore Venezuela Project Brings 100 Years of Geological Data Back to Life by Emily Smith Llinás, AAPG EXPLORER
