Abstract: Evaluating GIS for Establishing and Monitoring Environmental Conditions of Oil Fields
Russell W. Pfeil, James M. Ellis
Good management of an oil field
and compliance with ever-increasing environmental regulations is enhanced by technologies that improve a company's understanding of
field
/production facilities and environmental conditions that have occurred to both through time. In Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, and offshore Cabinda, remote sensing, computer-aided drafting (CAD) and Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies have effectively been used by Chevron to provide accurate maps of facilities and to better understand environmental conditions. Together these proven technologies have provided a solid and cost-effective base for planning
field
operations, verifying well and seismic locations, and locating sampling sites. The end product of these technologies is often cartographic-q
ality hardcopy images and maps for use in the office and
field
. However, even when the
data
collected by these technologies are spatially co-registered and integrated into a high-performance workstation environment, users are unable to query, model, or interactively link to spreadsheets routinely used for collecting important
data
about the oil
field
.
Chevron has been evaluating the capability of Geographical Information System (GIS) technology to integrate images, maps, and tabular data
into a useful database that can help managers and workers better evaluate conditions in an oil
field
, plan new facilities, and monitor/predict trends (for
example
, of air emissions, groundwater, soil chemistry, subsidence, etc.). Remote sensing, CAD (if formatted properly), and GPS
data
can be integrated to establish the spatial or cartographic base of the GIS. A major obstacle to establishing a sophisticated GIS for an overseas operation is the initial cost of
data
collection and conversion from legacy
data
base management systems and hardcopy to appropriate digital format. However, Chevron routinely uses GIS for oil spill modeling and is now usin
GIS in the
field
for integrating GPS
data
with
field
observations and programs.
AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90958©1995 AAPG Pacific Section Meeting, San Francisco, California