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GIS and Petroleum Industry
Productions and Refining Sector
This involves the process of exploring new locations as petroleum reserves, managing the production of crude petroleum from earth strata, managing the pipeline network to transfer crude sources to refining plant and facility management of various resources connected to such a huge industry.
- Petroleum Exploration
Discovering new sources of petroleum ahead of the competition is one of the keys to staying successful in the petroleum industry. While the application of GIS is relatively new to the world of petroleum exploration it will no doubt prove to be an invaluable tool. An efficient GIS can help to evaluate the potential for oil in promising locations. One of the biggest benefits of GIS programs is the ability of these programs to do analysis. Petroleum exploration is a very complicated field dependent on a multitude of variables, because of this the analysis capabilities of GIS programs will surly be able to lower the cost of petroleum exploration by analyzing the potential of petroleum being found at a potential location and also the potential yield of an oil field. GIS programs are also used to monitor the condition and flow of pipelines and determine the best locations for the pipelines used to transport the oil out of the fields and to the refineries.
Exploration requires the analysis of a lot of different types of data such as satellite imagery, digital aerial photo mosaics, seismic surveys, surface geology studies, subsurface and cross section interpretations and images, well locations, and existing infrastructure information. A GIS can tie these data together to the location in question and allow you to overlay, view, and manipulate the data in the form of a map to thoroughly analyze the potential for finding new or extending play potential.
Geologists,
geophysicists, engineers and petro-physicists usually perform
exploration evaluation.
Following the analysis process, the individuals come together to integrate the independent evaluations into a final solution. The recent trend in the industry is to form multi-discipline teams and approach the analysis through integrated analyses.
The power of GIS can be applied here to help these individual disciplines to work in an integrated approach.
- Production
To produce found reserves, the company must first understand certain geographic, infrastructure, business conditions, and environmental factors about the area in question. GIS technology is ideally suited to this kind of overlay analysis and can be integrated with other business risk or economic business planning engines to provide a focused business solution toolset.
- Managing Facilities
The global nature of the petroleum industry results in an infrastructure that is vast and difficult to manage. A large, integrated oil company must keep track of everything from drilling platforms to pipeline networks to refineries. The commercial, operational, and often harsh environmental conditions in which these facilities exist make it critical that they be planned, operated, and maintained effectively.
Often, finding an economic reserve is as much dependent on a practically and properly implemented facilities structure as it is on the exploration and production itself. Certainly the profitability of a commercial venture is often heavily dependent on the facility and pipeline infrastructure.
GIS can be used to map the gathering and transmission of products to a facility. Once there, integrating with more traditional "in plant" infrastructure management systems, such as CAD, attribute records, and scanned documents, allows the true geographic placement of CAD entities complementing the CAD architecture.
- Pipeline Management
The Pipeline network forms one of the most critical and intelligent components of the petroleum industry. The creation and management of a functional pipeline network requires in depth analysis and study of geographical locations, business requirements and managed utilization of resources leading into optimal productions and transfer of crude and refined oil from petroleum reserves to refinery and then to storage units respectively. Competitive pressure and regulatory constraints are placing increasing demands on pipeline operators to operate in an efficient and responsible manner. Responding to these demands requires accessibility to information regarding geographically distributed assets and operations.
GIS can be used in the site location process to minimize impacts to the environment during construction and from accidental release, as well as to lessen the costs of permits and liability risks associated with accidental releases. Ecological variables developed from publicly available spatial data sets can be utilized in this process.
The themes and variables used as input in this process mainly address direct construction costs and pipeline efficiency once the pipeline has been completed. Some of the variables include:
- Shortest distance from source to market
- Least grading (removal of trees, etc.)
- Costs associated with right of way
- Slope of terrain
- Number of stream, road, and railroad crossings
- Substrate (rock, soils, etc., associated with burial)
- Existing laws and regulations (wetlands, etc.)
- Proximity to population centers, etc.
- Utilization of existing utility corridors and easements
- Coverage analysis.
The potential costs of environmental impacts during construction as well as ecological and liability costs that may result from accidental releases after construction also accounts to the cost factor of the petroleum company. Some of these costs can be substantial (potentially millions of dollars) and include:
- Environmental damage
- Litigation and settlement costs
- Environmental response and investigation
- Criminal and civil penalties
- Environmental remediation
- Damage to reputation and community relations
An increasing number of environmental spatial data sets have become available to the general public, offering a great opportunity for companies to avoid these environmental and liability risks with relatively little effort by incorporating them into their normal GIS siting procedures.
GIS
technology facilitates the organization and management of data with a
geographic component. It also eases data acquisition and utilization.
GIS provides the pipeline operator with improved capability to manage
pipeline integrity, improved efficiencies in pipeline operations, and
improved response to business development opportunities.
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