From OSDU to Ontology: Why Oil & Gas AI Readiness Lives at the Meaning Layer

The five-answer problem Ask a simple question inside a large operator: “How is this asset producing against plan, and what’s the constraint?” Now watch five systems answer five different things. The production historian knows a “well” as a set of surface sensor tags. The reservoir team reasons about the wellbore and its completions in a subsurface model. Finance knows a cost object rolled up to a lease, licence, or block. The maintenance system knows the facility it sits on. The commercial team knows the contract. Every one of them is correct — and none agree on where a “well” ends and a “well