A duet of petroleum shows in London

AGI GeoComm16

When is a map not a map, Part II

I just posted on LinkedIn Pulse Opinions are free, but Facts are sacred, taking off from Simon Rogers ex of Guardian Data now at Google Data by way of Twitter. This was spurred by the EU Referendum, and setting aside debates raging around it, this is my contribution in my field of petroleum geology in general and mapping / GIS in particular. UN Comtrade has a fabulous collection of statistics, which are so easy to search & discover, that I simply copy&pasted screenshots into this video.

Helping companies map their processes

FindingPetroleum in London yesterday launched me as early adopter of LINQ Ltd. Here is the companion Digital Energy Journal Apr/May full issue p.14. Also new banner on my home page.

Esri Petroleum & Amazon Web Services shows

click to enlarge

Personal portfolio of Esri maps

As I went solo in the new year, I collected my previous works also seen in the banner map gallery, and posted the Esri maps as a map story. Go here if it's too slow to load.

Petroleum GIS then and now

Exprodat published a free eBook: Why use GIS in petroleum?, an excellent state-of-play as well as good industry marketing to augment their impressive blog. Does their Figure 1 not have a certain air of déjà vu, however, compared to Figure 1 of my article in CADalyst written 25 years ago?

“Au revoir” RMOTC dataset, part VII

“Lucky 7”, this is my closing post on the RMOTC series on subsurface 3D data, to explore reservoir depletion, pipeline routing and gridding/contouring. This also ends for now my tenure in Kuwait, where I prepared this dataset for a training tool. Follow me on LinkedIn to see where I'll go next...

Gridding and contouring (RMOTC dataset, part VI)

Free geosciences 3D data show GIS helping model reservoir depletion, and displaying it on the desktop and on-line. Then came pipeline routing and now to close the loop is gridding and contouring. Again, this is no replacement for geosciences packages, but rather a tool for triage:

• first stack as many data as needed (like basin hydrodynamics or land permitting) for play-fairway analyses
• then focus on targets with geoscience apps on specifics (like seismic and petrophysics) for prospects

Openware inaugural newlsetter

Ask the GIS Expert column on page 14 in the inaugural newsletter of Openware (Esri distributor in Kuwait) echoes the current blog series: use what you already have on your Esri desktop.

Pipeline routing (RMOTC dataset, part V)

As promised last week here is the update to my second most popular Slideshare post: using ArcGIS Model Builder to plan a pipeline route as a function of topography, slope, land cover and cultural data (roads, rivers, wetlands etc.). As RMOTC is remote, see (pardon the pun) it is uninhabited and land cover is uniformly grass- or shrub-land, which has the same IGBP class of 5 (middle-of-the-road).

Simple reservoir depletion modelling, part IV

This last in a series shows how to further extend the reach of your GIS analysis across the corporation in full 3D via a free ArcGIS Explorer Desktop. Simply go Add Contents: ArcGIS layers, and to enhance performance go Base Map: Clear basemap. This is a large data set complete with local topography.

Simple reservoir depletion modelling, part III

This is to show on the web or with a free desktop GIS the results of the previous two postings. The free data-set from Teapot Dome is a great opportunity to display 3D petro-data in Esri. As the previous posting suggested, data were upgraded to Esri 3D Analyst ArcGlobe here.

Simple reservoir depletion modelling, part II

Posted on ArcGIS Online a 3D rendition of the Teapot Dome free 3D GIS dataset by RMOTC and model by me. I used Esri ArcScene from its ArcMap 3D Analyst extension. If you don't have that, then download the free ArcGIS Explorer Desktop, and point to the layer package file here [updated with ArcGlobe]. ArcGIS Explorer Online cannot display 3D packages, furthermore, the drop-down menu on the arcgis.com site will suggest how to access it. You can get ArcGIS Desktop for Home use with extensions for $100 here.

Simple reservoir depletion modelling

Following on last week's Teapot Dome 3D dataset, here's the first step toward upgrading my most popular Slideshare post: Geoscience class notes have an option to run ESRI Model Builder that comes with the Spatial Analyst extension. Simply reversing reservoir topography and applying a surface run-off model, will mimic the depletion of reservoir of its petroleum content. The same way water flows downstream though gravity, petroleum will flow up-slope through hydrostatic recharge (in other words buoyancy pushes hydrocarbons up on top of denser water and out of a reservoir).

Guns & Roses, or: 3D GIS anyone?

[Update 2: layer package can now be found as Teapot Dome Six Pack on PUG Online
Update: RMOTC was sold off in 2015, their ftp site is now gone, ask for available copies]

The Guns part is the colorful history associated with the Teapot Dome. A remote Wyoming oilfield once a sleepy Naval Petroleum Reserve, the Teapot Dome Scandal was, however, the biggest to rock Washington DC until Watergate... or the oil industry until the Enron collapse! Read this introduction to a book excerpt: Marines Invade Wyoming - From the Halls of Motazuma to the Oil Fields of Teapot Dome, for cape-and-sword intrigue from ranchers and oil barons to US senators and the White House...

An excellent GIS repository

This summer I followed the ESRI User conference via twitter, which put me onto their excellent video resource page. That was great as it has not been easy, even after 25 years, to tell friends and family what I “spend just all hours of the day and days of the seasons and years”. That sound bite is from this video, which I found the best intro for “the rest of the world”.

The power of context, Part IV

Two anecdotes on remote sensing and environmental monitoring highlight some issues in measuring and predicting the current Gulf of Mexico oil rupture.

bp oil rupture, Part II

Here the latest from bp itself at the current NOC show in London.

bp oil rupture

News swirling around the incident in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) compels me to draw out some salient facts and gather them here to help the uninitiated (I did this yesterday for my in-laws). This blog title is from the last slide of the video in my last blogpost.

Rebranding conferences

Last week I presented at the PPDM London User Group Meeting, and the week prior at Finding Petroleum's (FP) January Conference.