Seismic Entitlements
Establishes a shared, independently verifiable record of seismic ownership and usage rights — so entitlements can be proven in minutes rather than reconstructed from contracts, spreadsheets, and institutional knowledge.
The challenge
Seismic outlives the wells it was shot for, and its value depends entirely on proving who may use it, under what conditions, and for what purpose. Those rights sit in contracts, spreadsheets, legacy systems, and institutional knowledge — so confirming an entitlement takes weeks, clouded ownership drives litigation, and records go missing in M&A.
The B4E approach
The Seismic Entitlements program encodes the rights and conditions attached to each dataset in smart contracts, so an entitlement becomes a shared, independently verifiable record the moment a dataset is registered or leased — rather than something reconstructed from scattered agreements after the fact.
Outcomes
One of the longest-lived assets in energy
Seismic data outlives the wells it was shot for. It is critical not only to exploration but increasingly to carbon capture and storage, geothermal, and future subsurface development — and its value depends entirely on being able to prove who has the right to use it, under what conditions, and for what purpose.
Those rights are governed by layered arrangements spanning raw and processed data, reprocessed versions, leases, and trades. They are still tracked across contracts, spreadsheets, legacy systems, and institutional knowledge, with little standardization between partners.
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Cost that never shows up on a line item
Confirming what a company is contractually entitled to use consumes staff time that is rarely quantified — and at portfolio scale it is material.
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Clouded ownership drives disputes
Ambiguous rights have already produced multimillion-dollar litigation across the industry.
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The M&A blind spot
Entitlement records are routinely lost in transactions, leaving acquirers unable to confirm what they actually bought.
Six questions that take weeks instead of minutes
Entitlement questions cut across subsurface, land, contracts, legal, data governance, commercial, corporate development, and audit. They become urgent exactly when decisions are time-sensitive — a trade, a lease, a reprocessing request, an access review, or a transaction.
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Who owns this dataset, and who has the right to use it?
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What restrictions apply?
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Can it be shared, transferred, licensed, leased, sold, or reprocessed?
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What lineage or ownership history applies?
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What fees, approvals, obligations, or conditions are required?
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Can the company prove its rights if challenged?
By establishing entitlement truth at the point of registration, teams act on a verified record rather than reconstructing one after the fact.
What changes for the teams doing the work
Provable ownership and usage rights
Confirm who owns a dataset, which rights apply, and under what conditions — without assembling contracts, correspondence, spreadsheets, and legacy records. Land, legal, subsurface, data, and corporate development all work from the same verified record.
Less documentation archaeology
Researching rights, lease conditions, reprocessing permissions, and transfer restrictions consumes skilled staff time that is rarely quantified. A queryable entitlement record frees that effort for higher-value work.
Confidentiality by design
Entitlement details are encrypted so only the parties to an arrangement can review them, participants stay anonymous to the wider network, and transaction activity is masked — so joining the shared record never exposes a commercially sensitive position.
Litigation and M&A risk reduction
A single, independently verifiable record removes the clouded-ownership conditions that drive disputes — and closes the M&A blind spot where entitlement records are lost in the transaction and acquirers can't confirm what they bought.
Industry-wide network effect
Unlike a system owned by one party, this is neutral and shared. Every additional operator, partner, vendor, or approved institution that joins makes the industry's entitlement record more complete.
A hybrid architecture: private to transact, open to discover
Entitlements have to be confidential between the parties and still discoverable across the industry. Those pull in opposite directions, so the platform does both in two layers.
Distributed, private, peer-to-peer
Each participating company runs its own application and orchestration node, transacting over a shared distributed ledger. Ownership and lease records become a shared, immutable, independently verifiable source of truth that no single operator, vendor, or intermediary controls.
Fast geospatial search across the ecosystem
A central discovery layer provides rapid geospatial and metadata search over public datasets, so members can find what exists across the industry without exposing the confidential terms underneath it.
Fully integrated with OSDU data standards — entitlements register against the data models the industry is already moving to.
The hard problems are solved or scoped
This is not a concept starting from zero.
Proof of concept completed
Demonstrated that smart contracts can handle the full complexity of seismic ownership, leasing, discovery, and lineage.
Functional and technical design complete
Workflows, matrices, and storyboards are finished; dataset registration, leasing, and public-announcement flows are designed and ready to build.
Standards-based and industry-shaped
Built on OSDU for data structure, with PPDM standards engagement, and shaped by an operator workgroup drawn from B4E member companies.
Funded by the consortium
Platform design and development are funded by B4E — no development cost is passed to operators, which removes the cost and risk any one member would carry building alone.
The path to enterprise deployment
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Project plan approval
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Functional & technical design
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Core MVP development
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Pilot testing & QA
In progress
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Security model validation
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Version 1 release candidate
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Full deployment & scaling
One ownership type at a time
The model scales by ownership type, each phase adding only the new functionality it requires. Starting with a clean type keeps the first deployment fast and low-risk.
- 1
100%-owned data and simple leases
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Multi-party and joint ownership
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Reprocessing lineage and derived products
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Government and regulatory entitlements
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M&A and portfolio transfers
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Broader partner, vendor, and third-party participation
A structured four-month onboarding
Members evaluate the model against a defined ownership type, representative datasets, and agreed workflows — with measurable success criteria and an executive report at the end.
Setup
Kickoff, onboarding team established, platform access provisioned.
Configuration & data load
Confirm ownership type and workflows, align to OSDU data models, register representative datasets, train users.
Live entitlements
Register and validate real datasets and lease scenarios; confirm rights verification, confidentiality, and discovery workflows.
Evaluation & report
Validate success criteria and deliver an executive report with findings and a scale-up recommendation.
Designed to be light: typically one to three people contributing a combined 5–10 hours per week. Data can arrive through a web interface, structured files, or API — no major system changes to evaluate it.
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Help shape the digital infrastructure of energy
Membership puts your organization at the table — co-developing the standards, solutions, and platform the industry will run on.