One of the more nagging problems with state well information is the scattered reporting of well elevation information. Well elevations are required to build a geological structure map, from which underlying geologic structures such as oil traps can be deduced, prospected, and drilled. Basically, one subtracts the formation top depth from the well elevation to calculate a normalized subsea value which can be contoured. Because of the huge number of wells without elevations, particularly in the state of Texas, prospecting at a sub-regional level is difficult with missing data.
In the past, we had access only to 30 meter data to interpolate well elevations. Mike created a statewide 10 meter ArcGIS Raster data set. Note that this data set has postings every ten meters instead of 30 meters as before making it nine times larger than before. It took Mike approximately 180 hours of computer time to generate the SDE data set using ArcGIS. I then used FME Workbench from Safe Software to perform a point on raster interpolation taking the more than one million Texas well WGS84 longitude/latitude coordinates and overlaid them with the ArcGIS Raster SDE 10 meter topography. We will now package this up and deliver it as an enhancement to our Unlimited Well Access subscribers. This process is a tangible improvement to our data that will allow our customers to “find oil and gas faster” as they can now map more readily on a subregional basis.
