Governments From Around the World Agree to Collaborate on National Data Repository Initiatives

LONDON and HOUSTON, TX--(Marketwire - May 10, 2011) - The National Data Repository Work Group (NDR) has announced that government and regulatory officials from around the world met in Rio de Janeiro to collaborate on data management best practices for oil and natural gas information. This was the 10th meeting since 1996 and the collaboration accomplished by NDR over the last fifteen years has proven to be a growing benefit to nations with significant hydrocarbon reserves. An NDR is a collection of oil and gas exploration data associated with an oil province and well managed NDRs not only ensure integrity for this 'national treasure' data but also act as virtual data-rooms for energy companies seeking to explore for oil and natural gas deposits.

Over 130 delegates from 30 different countries participated in NDR10 which was hosted by Agência Nacional do Petróleo, Gás Natural e Biocombustíveis (ANP), the oil and gas regulatory agency of Brazil. Organization of the NDR conferences is managed by Energistics, the upstream oil and gas industry open standards consortium, and NDR is part of the Energistics Regulatory Special Interest Group.

NDR Chairman Stewart Robinson of the UK DECC described NDR10 as, "The best conference yet with the promise of future collaboration which will benefit the entire oil and gas industry." During the conference a number of potential areas for collaboration were identified including production reporting standards, guidelines for tendering and re-tendering NDR contracts and benchmarking NDR metrics. DECC have set up a collaboration website and the first collaboration project around receiving and publishing production data is currently underway.

Stewart Robinson, a co-founder of NDR and chief organizer of all ten meetings, is retiring this year and has stood down as chairman of the Work Group. Malcolm Fleming, Chief Executive Officer of CDA in the UK will take over as chairman for NDR11 which will be hosted by PETRONAS in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in the autumn of 2012.

Malcolm Fleming said, "I would like to thank Stewart Robinson for organizing this group and taking it to the level it has become. I am honoured to be taking over the leadership of this initiative at a time when it seems likely that real progress on collaboration has been made and will continue to grow. I am also pleased that PETRONAS have volunteered to host the next meeting, which will be the first in that region."

About National Data Repository
NDR is a global organization with the mission to foster collaboration between countries with hydrocarbon reserves and the oil and natural gas industry to develop, adopt and implement standardized data management techniques, best practices and regulatory reporting. NDR is a part of the Energistics Regulatory Special Interest Group and membership is open to interested governments and industry organizations. For more information please visit www.energistics.org/national-data-repository-ndr.

About Energistics
Energistics is a global, not-for-profit consortium uniquely designed to unite upstream oil and natural gas industry professionals in a neutral and collaborative facilitation environment to develop and deploy open data exchange standards and to address E&P information challenges. Membership consists of integrated, independent and national oil companies, oilfield service companies, hardware and software vendors, system integrators, regulatory agencies and the global standards user community. For more information please visit www.energistics.org.

About Common Data Access
CDA is the UK NDR and provides shared data solutions for the UK upstream oil industry and the UK government. Best known for providing services like the CDA DataStore and DEAL, CDA, unlike many NDRs, is owned by the oil industry through Oil and Gas UK. For more information please visit www.cdal.com and www.oilandgasuk.co.uk.