For decades, crude oil producers have faced a fundamental operational challenge: accurately tracking the physical and financial movement of oil from the field to the balance sheet. Every crude oil pickup, transfer, and sale creates transaction data that must be captured, validated, entered into production accounting systems, and ultimately shared with partners.
Long before “digital oilfield” became an industry buzzword, the oil & gas industry solved a critical first challenge through a set of standards for how crude oil and condensate transactions are structured and transmitted, paving the way for further innovation.
Originally established in 1978, the Crude Oil Data Exchange (CODE) became the industry’s standard format for electronically transmitting crude oil run ticket information between companies. Later expanded to include oil statements and tank increment records. The standard itself, developed through the Petroleum Industry Data Exchange (PIDX), defined how companies could exchange critical crude oil and condensate transaction records in a consistent format. Standardized fields included:
- Run ticket detail records
- Property and lease identifiers
- Ticket numbers and dates
- Tank and meter numbers
- Net oil volumes
- Gravity and temperature data
- Trucking charges and adjustments
- Transmission totals
Importantly, CODE was never intended to be more than a data exchange standard, leaving it to oil producers to put it into practice. CODE standardized the exchange of transaction and run ticket data after capture, whether the source was paper field tickets, meter tickets, or operational systems. The value of CODE was interoperability: allowing different companies, systems, and accounting platforms to communicate using a shared transactional language. But the critical technology piece needed to implement CODE at scale was still missing.
Recognizing the potential of CODE and challenges in implementing it across the industry, PDS Energy built and operated a first-of-its-kind electronic Crude Oil Data Exchange network under the CODE name, helping oil producers securely route critical transaction data from the field to the balance sheet and among partners. For more than 20 years, CODE has reliably moved some of the energy sector’s most important information: crude oil volumes and values that directly drive revenue, accounting, settlements, and partner reporting.
The PDS Energy operated Crude Oil Data Exchange quietly became the digital gathering system for crude oil transaction data across the field and into the back office. In many ways, CODE was ahead of its time. It enabled operators and purchasers to electronically move transaction data between accounting systems decades before cloud integrations, APIs, or digital transformation initiatives became common.
Since its inception, PDS has continued to evolve CODE with the latest technologies. PDS has also expanded the digital gathering system through the E-Ticket Exchange, extending digital transaction exchange beyond crude oil run tickets into additional operational workflows such as produced water hauling and broader field ticket management. Together, the E-Ticket exchange and CODE provide an end-to-end solution to digitally gather run tickets, statements, and tank increments at the source, normalize diverse purchaser formats, integrate crude oil and condensate sales data directly into production accounting, and securely distribute data to partners.
In an industry that depends on joint ventures to drill and operate wells, oil producers often own a large number of working interests yet lack the same financial visibility into non-op assets as they do operated wells. Amid commodity price volatility, having this visibility has never been more urgent. PDS remains committed to delivering that timely access, connecting the field to the back office with our proven data networks to confidently move energy forward.
Have questions about CODE or the E-Ticket Exchange? Please reach out to the PDS team.
