Big data meets the frac job

Published: Fri, 02/20/15

A big data tool for Twitter called "Storm" allows for the analysis of the enormous data stream that is going through Twitter each day. There are 140 million tweets per day, but Storm can pull out trends as they are occurring and show different trends for geographic locations. When you hear "trending on Twitter," it's actually big data tools doing most of the heavy lifting!

With the low oil prices, and fluctuating profit margins, there is no room for error in today's market. Cutting costs can give everyone in the industry an advantage right now.

How can you cut costs? If you're in this business, I'm sure that you are finding ways.

Getting information -- that can be acted on -- is one step in the cost cutting adventure.

So if the data involved in hydraulic fracturing was analyzed in helpful ways, that might be one piece of information.

That process of data collection and analysis is not easy, however.

First, the data has to be collected. This means getting lots of different players (read: competitors!) to give up secretive information.

Then, this process has to be repeated across different states and plays.

Next, data sitting in massive databases is a digital "paperweight" unless it can be examined. Analyzed. Acted upon.

So, the right tools need to be applied -- in the right order -- to look at this data and get into a format that is usable.

Even if you had the resources...

...and the connections...

...to be able to interpret all that data, who has time for all that?

It's really necessary to look to an expert for that type of specialized data.

I have some colleagues at Primary Vision that have already done the data collection, continue to collect it, and have built some powerful big data tools to analyze the data surrounding the hydraulic fracturing industry. Their work spans:

* Different plays and formations
* Frac jobs across companies
* Dozens of service companies
* Hundreds of operators
* Multiple states

All that's left for you to do is stop by their website, check them out, and if you want, sign up for some of the free data, as Primary Vision gives us a "peek behind the curtain" into the data they have crunched.

Go directly to the Primary Vision website and sign up for some "freshly picked" frac data from the industry that has already been analyzed using their tools here:
http://www.pvmic.com/

I also highly recommend the most recent Primary Vision blog posts that show some of the oil industry and frac job trends over the last few quarters. I especially enjoyed their analysis of frac water volume use. Their blog is here:
http://blogs.pvmic.com/