Launched in July 1997, the OpenSpirit Alliance was a consortium

Consortium

A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....

 sharing a common goal of enabling multi-vendor Exploration and Production application interoperability

Interoperability

Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together . The term is often used in a technical systems engineering sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to...

 based on industry standards.

This consortium

Consortium

A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....

 was funded by members of POSC and comprised oil companies (Shell, Chevron

Chevron Corporation

Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation headquartered in San Ramon, California, United States and active in more than 180 countries. It is engaged in every aspect of the oil, gas, and geothermal energy industries, including exploration and production; refining,...

, Statoil

Statoil

Statoil ASA is a Norwegian petroleum company established in 1972. It merged with Norsk Hydro in 2007 and was known as StatoilHydro until 2009, when the name was changed back to Statoil ASA. The brand Statoil was retained as a chain of fuel stations owned by StatoilHydro...

, Elf

Elf Aquitaine

Elf Aquitaine was a French oil company which merged with TotalFina to form TotalFinaElf. The new company changed its name to Total in 2003...

, BG

BG Group

BG Group plc is a global oil and gas company headquartered in Reading, United Kingdom. It has operations in 25 countries across Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America and South America and produces around 680,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. It has a major Liquefied Natural Gas ...

, etc.) and software vendors (PrismTech

PrismTech

PrismTech, is a software company founded in 1992 by Keith Steele, John Russell and John Bigerstaff. PrismTech's USA headquarters are located at Woburn, MA, USA with other offices in Gateshead, UK; Paris, France; Hengelo, Netherlands....

, Schlumberger

Schlumberger

Schlumberger Limited is the world's largest oilfield services company. Schlumberger employs over 110,000 people of more than 140 nationalities working in approximately 80 countries...

, PGS

Petroleum Geo-Services

Petroleum Geo-Services ASA, an oilfield service company, provides geophysical services worldwide. The company provides various seismic and reservoir services, including acquisition, processing, interpretation, and field evaluation. The floating production unit was demerged in 2006 and listed as a...

, Shared Earth Technologies, Jason Geosystems, de Groot-Bril Earth Sciences, Petrotechnical Data Systems, IFP

Institut français du pétrole

The French Institute of Petroleum is a public research organisation in France founded in 1944 as Institute of Oil, Fuels and Lubricants ....

, etc.).

OpenSpirit Alliance was at the origin of the birth of an independent software company named OpenSpirit Corporation

OpenSpirit Corporation

OpenSpirit Corporation, an oilfield service company, provides software services worldwide. The company provides middleware that specializes in geophysical data integration...

.