Craig Lindsay is a Director at Aeon and has over forty years of experience in the oil and gas industry. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to Aeon in the form of project management and well-bore analysis.  In 2010, he founded a global consultancy company, Core Specialist Services, operating from Aberdeen.  

As you have been in the core analysis industry for almost 40 years, could you tell me about the most significant technological changes that have happened in that time?

The biggest and most significant change has occurred mainly in the last 10 years – the advent of multi-scale / high-resolution core imaging and logging technologies. For most of the entire history of core analysis industry, the majority of the information (value) of the core has been inaccessible. This is no longer the case as methods such as high-resolution X-Ray imaging, core scanning and scratch testing allow us to access a wealth of data that means the core has greater value than ever before. However, this brings with it the requirement to manage, analyse and visualise “big data”. It’s a nice problem to have but without the right solution, the full value of this great resource won’t be realised. 

What made you interested in AEON as a company?

I work with core data that takes many forms, but images and therefore visualisation are highly important. The ability to access / manage / visualise / interpret / integrate data are the key benefit of Aeon’s approach that generated my interest in the company.

What did you like most about the platform? How does your business take advantage of the solutions provided by AEON?

Our projects generate many different file types – spreadsheets, documents, images, metadata etc. In order that we and our clients can have any significant level of benefit from all this data requires accessibility as in an effect, a single entity – not a multitude of disparate and obscure files. The platform provided by Aeon solves this problem and by doing so gives my company a competitive advantage over other equivalent service providers.

What are the benefits of the platform you are taking advantage of? What have you been able to achieve since you started using the platform? 

Simply – much more effective data management. This saves a lot of time and results in a better outcome for our clients. It’s a win-win. 

What are your predictions for the future of geological data analysis?

There has been a lot of talk about “big data” and the “digital oilfield” but from the geoscience perspective, I have seen limited progress until recently. Now that we can benefit from new technologies to extract the full benefit from the core and other geological materials this is definitely the future. Vast repositories of geological materials exist in countries worldwide from oil and mineral exploration – the geological sciences can benefit enormously provided that the tools exist to manage the information.

KeyFacts Energy Industry Directory: Core Specialist Services   l   AEON