GeoGathering holds 2009 conference

In the world of product design and manufacture, the 3D product image created using computer-aided design (CAD) software has come to act as an intuitive interface and gateway to all kinds of information sought by designers, engineers, and crafts journeymen of diverse types.

In much the same way, in the midstream oil and gas industry, another kind of spatial representation, maps generated using a geographic information system (GIS), are increasingly seen as the widest-serving interface and information gateway for all things wells and pipelines.

It’s not difficult to find oil and gas industry professionals who remember when petroleum companies stocked “huge” rooms full of map cabinets. Field personnel submitted redlined maps for revision on a near daily basis. But getting the revised map back into circulation could take up to a year.

The consequences following from this limiting information infrastructure were profound. “My first position was with a large, integrated oil and gas company,” said Dewitt Burdeaux, a pipeline safety specialist with the US Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration (PHMSA). “It had very stove-piped departments, with each keeping its own records. Risk analysis was unheard of. It took years for problems to emerge, and how problems were solved wasn’t shared.”

Modern GIS has a two-element structure, i.e., an image in association with attribute information. The ability to tie attribute data to spatial data makes all the difference. It means that, besides automating the establishment of exactly where something is — no mean feat in itself — GIS can prove instrumental in meeting regulatory requirements, allowing cross-functional integrated collaboration, and establishing a single source of truth for field data.

In a presentation given at the recent GeoGathering 2009 conference, Michael Harris, an engineering manager in the midstream division of Anadarko Petroleum Co., said, “We have been on a journey to find a better solution. What we need is complete, online, easily retrievable information about our horizontal infrastructure that includes a visual interface and that takes an integrated, holistic approach to the data lifecycle. Information includes for leasing, access rules, population, structures, performance, and financial data.”

According to Steve Cooper, chief communications officer with the Professional Petroleum Data Management (PPDM) association, to date about 4.5 million oil and gas wells have been drilled worldwide; about 3.5 million of those are in the US. Documenting the location and status of infrastructure, past and present, used to gather and transport production fluids to processing plants and refineries presents a daunting challenge to those responsible for it.

The most common method of data creation for GIS is digitization, where a copy map or survey plan is transferred into a digital medium through use of a CAD program. So-called “heads-up” digitizing, which is gaining in use, traces geographic data directly on top of aerial imagery.

Power of visualization

Cooper said the power of GIS to enhance data presentation, visualization, and analysis has taken it from being a niche tool to become a ubiquitous technology and the basis for a wide range of decision making. “Visualization allows you to intuitively assimilate information in a way not possible when working with spreadsheets. Animation makes visualizations interactive,” he said.

The role of GIS technology, according to Cooper, extends into the following:

•  Inventory – to answer questions such as what do I have, where is it, who owns it, who can use it, and what is its history?

•  Integration – of information related to production, cost, and revenues, accessed by means of a map. Data types include financial, operational, technical, and various types of unstructured data that may be indexed and located using search technology.

•  Quality – while poor quality data can lead to bad decisions, the establishment of business rules as to what information is brought into the holistic mapping system can help establish what data to trust.

•  Workflow – can provide the focal point for initiation of processes and decision tracking.

•  Interoperability – with the need to be able to run analytical applications against current data, a map-based interface is ideal for selecting data and can act as a kind of information portal.

Despite explosive growth in the volume and usage of GIS, Cooper said that further exploitation of the technology is hampered by the fact that it “hasn’t been subjected to accepted data management best practices.” Instead, the space has been an arena for “toothbrush standards: everyone has one, but nobody wants to use anyone else’s.”

The danger then becomes that managers are making decisions based on data of unknown or dubious quality. Even a basic fact like what “projection” is being used for a map is often unknown to its users. Cooper said he personally knows of instances where this kind of misunderstanding has brought companies to the brink of making serious, costly errors.

A projection is a mathematical means of transferring information from a model of the Earth, which represents a three-dimensional curved surface, to a two-dimensional medium—paper or computer screen. Different projections are used for different type maps. For example, as is well known, a map that accurately reflects the shapes of the continents will distort their relative sizes. A GIS should be able to transform digital information, gathered from sources with different projections or coordinate systems, to a common system.

Use of GIS is one point where the upstream and midstream sectors of the oil and gas industry overlap. One problem facing upstream operators and pipeline companies alike is that they may not have a good handle on information about acquired assets. Cooper cited the example of an operator poised to drill in a location where, some years before, a dry well had already been drilled. Having no readily available record of the previous activity, work would have commenced had it not been for the institutional memory of a single individual.

Leading GIS providers include Autodesk, Bentley Systems, ESRI, Intergraph, Manifold Systems, Mapinfo, and GE Energy Smallworld. 

Abounding applications

According to Anadarko’s Harris, using a model-based approach that incorporates the PODS standard, CartoPac field solutions, and solutions from New Century Software, his company has gone a long way toward having the data collection processes; viewing and access tools; integration and work flows; and map-based interfaces needed to have one definitive source for pipeline data.

The pipeline open data standard (PODS), managed and maintained by the PODS Association, is an independent database modeling initiative applicable to gas and liquid gathering, transmission, and distribution pipeline systems. Its objective is a common platform for creating a standards-based GIS database.

Dr. Sheila Wilson, PODS director, said, “The PODS standard can be considered a little sister to the PPDM pipeline data interchange standards.”

New Century provides data management services and pipeline industry-specific applications for GIS systems. Ron Brush, president of New Century Software, said that potential GIS users turn to his company to do the data mapping and loading required to make GIS accurate, and for the specific applications needed in energy transportation sectors that include pipeline facilities, gas distribution, gas transmission pipelines, and gathering lines.

With more than a dozen packaged applications available, examples include the following:

•  For facility management, to maintain pipeline and centerline data in a PODS GIS;

•  Data loading, to assign stations and load pipeline GPS data into a PODS GIS;

•  Mapping and reporting to provide enterprise-wide Internet access to pipeline data, maps, alignment sheets, and reports; and

•  Integrity management for spill impact analysis, predicting overland spread and water transport for hazardous liquids.

Brush said there have been at least several advances in the use of GIS in recent years. “Web technologies have made it possible to deploy applications that can be managed through a mapping interface, combining different mediums.”

Another advance is the ability to integrate data taken from the field in near real time, for a kind of closed-loop process. Finally, “We’ve been in this industry a long time,” he said, “increasing adoption of the PODS standard has made it easier to develop applications.”

While maps may be interesting and fun, “you can only put so much on a map,” said Brush. “What’s more important and what users need is the data behind it.”

Users tend to progress in their use of GIS in a similar fashion. Once the data has been cleansed and there is a means for maintaining it, a centerline representation of the pipeline is derived. Over time, attributes, such as valves or casings are added.