The new object enables system-to-system communication and tracking to specify the requirements of a data-acquisition job for real-time drilling, thereby saving time and improving accuracy—and allows for AI consumption and use
San Francisco, CA, Dec 10, 2025 – The Energistics Consortium, an affiliate of The Open Group®, has published the WITSML DataWorkOrder (DWO) object v1.0. You can download it from the Energistics page in The Open Group Standards Library here.
This new object was designed to allow two organizations—usually a data service provider (the “Data Producer”) and an operator/oil company (the “Data Consumer”)—to use WITSML-enabled systems to specify the requirements and terms of a data-acquisition job for real-time drilling. System-to-system communication leads to more accurate results in less time, by reducing or eliminating the need for spreadsheets, emails, and phone calls, which are typically associated with specifying requirements for these jobs.
The DWO object also supports work processes so the Data Consumer and Data Producer can iterate on and enhance the description and requirements of the data-acquisition job.
The DWO object v1.0 is an add-on object to WITSML; there is one version of the DWO for WITSML v1.4.1.1 and one version for WITSML v2.1. Support for both versions of WITSML was deemed important by the community as the industry transitions from WITSML v1.4.1.1 to WITSML v2.1.
The idea for this new object came from Energistics member Equinor. The company also provided people to communicate the requirements for the new object, and to develop and document the design with other members of the WITSML Working Group. With this support, the DWO object went from “concept” to version 1 published in about 9 months.
“Work in the Energistics community is member-driven and member-led, so we knew if we wanted this new object, providing resources to help develop it was crucial for success,” said Lars Olav Grøvik, Advisor, Equinor, and member of the Energistics Board of Directors.
“Operations personnel whom my team supports explained how much time was wasted with spreadsheets, emails, and phone calls trying to specify clear requirements of a real-time drilling data-acquisition job,” explained Thomas Halland, Task Manager-Real Time Drilling, Equinor. “Based on our experience using WITSML, we knew system-to-system data transfer could streamline these communications and achieve better results. And we knew the entire industry would benefit from this approach, so we proposed developing it for the industry as an Energistics WITSML object.”
Once populated, the DWO object can be shared with other users and technologies so that they know up front the exact characteristics of the dataset that will be made available when the operation begins. The ability to easily share this data allows important AI/machine learning technologies to pre-configure their setup to maximize their use of the dataset based on the specified requirements.
“We see a huge potential in sharing data requirements in an automated manner using WITSML, thus enabling all data consumers to preconfigure their data acquisition technologies in a standardized and automated way using the full potential of the data,” Halland enthusiastically continued.
In addition to requirements for the next version of the DWO object, the WITSML Working Group is looking at how the data from the DWO object can be used in ongoing work for specifying data quality in WITSML.