Astana, 22 October. Kazakhstan has developed the Digital TsKRR system, which will move the approval of projects for the exploration and development of oil and gas fields online: submitting documents, expert review, meetings and voting will all take place on one platform, the Ministry of Energy said in reply to a request from BES.media.
TsKRR is the Central Commission for the Exploration and Development of Fields: before exploring or developing an oil and gas field, a company prepares project documents, and the commission reviews them and takes decisions. Much of this work is still on paper: documents are registered and checked for completeness, experts are appointed, materials are prepared for the meeting, a vote is held and the decision is drawn up, and these stages are not linked by a single digital system, which makes it hard to track deadlines and the implementation of decisions.
On the new platform each participant will have a personal account to submit materials, follow their review and receive expert opinions. The commission will be able to meet by video link and vote electronically, minutes and decisions will be drawn up in the system, and key steps will be signed with the electronic digital signature of the National Certification Centre. For technical review, an Aurora Nexus suite has been built: experts will be able to study geological and hydrodynamic field models directly in a browser without special software, while final opinions will still be written by specialists.
Development was financed by the project participants without budget money; the ministry will receive the system for free, indefinite use and will store subsoil users' data itself. The platform is built on the open-source Odoo system and can be connected to the Unified Subsoil Use Platform. Development and testing are complete, but the system still has to be installed in the ministry's infrastructure and handed over, so the ministry gives no launch date.
What it means: The approval of oil and gas projects, one of the most paper-heavy procedures in the industry, is getting a complete digital platform, from application to archive; it will start working once the ministry installs it.
Who benefits: Subsoil users, for whom review times matter, and the ministry, which gains control over deadlines and the implementation of decisions at no cost to the budget. The ministry did not say who exactly developed and paid for the system, referring only to "project participants."
Background: According to BES.media, the Ministry of Energy has put together a portfolio of 45 artificial intelligence projects, including the digitisation of geological archives and online monitoring of more than 4,000 wells, from which it expects savings of up to 1 billion tenge a year.
List of sources used: BES.media
Artificial intelligence was used in preparing this material.
