We’ve noticed there are three overlooked and very valuable data layers in our WhiteStar Culture product of which you may not be aware. We have incorporated all of the Texas Railroad Commission Pipeline data for Texas and we update this four times annually. This data layer includes attributes such as system name, operator, type, and diameter. This is the standard pipeline layer for the state of Texas. Even if you use no other data layer, the cost of repurchasing this standard layer of information from the state in raw format (hundreds of shape files) would exceed $4,000 annually and would be difficult to use because it gets delivered in one shape file per county.

Secondly, we have processed all of the massive 1:24,000 scale contour lines for the state of Texas so that they can easily be extracted. This very important data layer helps you to establish missing well elevations and to plan drilling activities more precisely according to topography. This data is so voluminous in its raw format that it is almost impossible to use.

Finally we have digitized and compiled oil and gas field outlines for many states. These are all part of the value you receive when you obtain a subscription to the WhiteStar Culture product.

Here at WhiteStar we are committed to ongoing updates of our data to put out the best possible digital cartographic products.   The Texas Land Survey updates for Q1 2010 have been completed.  Following is a summary of layer updates and additions:

Blocks - 10
Surveys - 471
Abstract - 535

Overlapping Blocks - 17
Overlapping Surveys - 75
Overlapping Abstract - 86

Hemphill and Jefferson Counties realized the most changes.  In addition, portions of  Brazos, Denton, Duval, Hardin, Harris, Harrison, Robertson, Shelby, Terry, Wheeler and Wilbarger Counties show updates.  Keep an eye on the blog for additional data update announcements.

Thanks,
Mike

The Downside of “Free”
Maps and charts are the lifeblood of the oil and gas industry and most petroleum executives crave the ability to visualize exploration maps in a dashboard format. The advent of free applications such as Google Earth has made complex imagery available to everyone, and while this online tool has raised awareness of the “power of the image,” it have also created confusion. For example, one cannot judge the precision, vintage, spatial accuracy or resolution of a given image merely by inspection. “Where is that well we drilled last year?” you might reasonably ask. Having the answer to critical questions is essential before putting a map into the wild, lest you run the risk of losing a deal because of lack of due diligence. For the casual user of Google Earth, these are not concerns and therefore not talked about much. As professionals, though, we must ask these questions.

A picture is worth a thousand words
Virtually any source map can be scanned and tied to geographic coordinates to form an imagery data source. For imagery data to be useful in a Geographic Information System, however, it must be tied to coordinates and overlaid with other data such oil well or pipeline locations. Explorationists commonly use imagery in the form of an air photo, topographic map, or satellite image to add a sense of “ground truth” to their maps. Points, lines, and polygons in isolation simply do not convey the same sense of truth, even though they may be precisely placed. A picture is worth a thousand words. Given an air photo, an oil company executive can instantly see the location of wells and other infrastructure. The euphoria this creates is undeniable, but sometimes misplaced unless one has confidence in the underlying process that was used to acquire and process the data.

The potentially high cost of “free”
There are several “gotchas” associated with imagery and many points along the way where errors can be introduced. Free data sources do not provide sufficient information about an image, such as its production date and quality. Where does the recent imagery start and old imagery stop? If you zoom out in Google Earth, for example, you can see many strips of data of varying quality, color schemes, and vintage. Such information is critical for exploration companies. In addition, free map services tend to have updated data primarily in urban areas, because that’s what most people care about. Not so in the oil and gas industry where our infrastructure tends to be located in rural locations.

Data overload
Imagery data can quickly fill up local storage space, even on very large computers. As data resolution increases (and engineers always want the highest resolution data available) imagery fills up disk space exponentially faster. A consequence is that 30 centimeter resolution data requires nine times more storage space than the standard one meter resolution data of just a few years ago. This trend is unlikely to change.

Because different client applications require data in different formats, on today’s servers you’ll find multiple versions of the same data in different formats just burning up disk space. Imagery management quickly becomes a mess when dealing in terabytes and IT staff spends more and more time documenting inventory, allocating server space, and updating ever larger databases when they could be focusing on revenue enhancing activities.

Third party services have evolved to address these problems, taking on the tasks of maintaining the expanding imagery database so that it can be streamed directly to oil and gas applications. For now, this involves loading the various imagery data sets and establishing web services that client applications can consume. Clients can offload internal proprietary imagery to a third party vendor and have that data streamed back into the company. This web service reduces the burden on corporate IT, saving time and money.

The future of imagery
In the future, organizations will likely take advantage of evolving technologies such as Cloud Computing with its nearly infinite computing and storage capabilities. Challenges will include uploading and downloading vast amounts of data, including rapidly changing proprietary data sets. However, the computational power of the cloud environment will offer many benefits including speed of access and the ability to use Extract, Transform and Load technologies to reformat data “on the fly.”

Free maps have popularized geospatial imagery, but they simply don’t offer the quality, robustness, or versatility needed for modern scientific exploration. The vision of the future is to store and maintain dynamic, up-to-date, multi-terabyte imagery databases on the cloud and speedily stream that data back into the enterprise for near real time analysis and decision making. The good news is that this future isn’t all that far away.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday! As promised we have added more great 1 meter imagery data to our collection. This time we have added Colorado and New Mexico. If you’re working in these areas, this imagery would make a fantastic backdrop to any project. Let us know if you have a need for this layer.

In his September 23rd blog post, Jeff Smith made you all aware of the Oil & Gas Field layer addition to Unlimited Basemap Access (UBA) for 4th Quarter 2009.  In addition to the Oil & Gas fields we’ve added gas transmission and HVL pipelines for the State of Oklahoma as well as pipelines for the Gulf of Mexico.  These data sets have been seamless integrated into the already available Texas pipelines.  Good stuff!

Here at WhiteStar we are staying true to our vision of providing our clients the data sets needed to make their jobs easier and hopefully more fun.  Stay tuned to the blog for additional news on other product improvements and enhancements in the coming weeks.

With the next release of GeoGraphix users will be able to consume web map services within GeoAtlas.  We’ve been working closely with the folks at GeoGraphix for the past few weeks and now have a beta version in-house.  Public and proprietary imagery, topo maps, landgrid or any other type of map service wrapped up in an ESRI .lyr file can be consumed and quickly rendered in a GeoAtlas map.  Have a look at this.  This image is an overview map of the wells, imagery and PLSS data for the State of Wyoming.  Once the wells were imported into WellBase, the township and imagery layers were quickly added.  Nationwide imagery, Land grid, Well locations, Topo Maps are avaialble via this model from WhiteStar.   If you’d like to see more, please contact either Steve Pickett or Adam Feldman at 800-736-6277.

In line with trying to be a bit of a resource, I put together this email focused on the lack of understanding revolving around the use of shape files.

If you’re using shape files for Petra, Geographix or SMT please read on. If you’re using ArcGIS, please disregard.

The best advice I can give here is use the right format for your software. Choose a true well spotting grid that enables you to calculate from footages or quarter calls. Build a truly accurate map for your native software that labels properly and displays properly. It is a lot harder (and impossible in some cases) to do the above using a shape file.

If you make maps and understand the facts about your data. These should include the source, finding out who maintains and creates the data, and the accuracy and precision.

As the Crocodile Hunter would say, “You should always know and respect the environment you are working within”.

If you don’t know the answer, give me a call on 303-781-5182 and I’ll try and help you out.

Cheers,

Anthony