[OSGeo-Discuss] GIS applications to off-shore E&P (oil & gas)

[Paulo Marcondes]

Bruce and ALL,

2008/2/21, Bruce.Bannerman at dpi.vic.gov.au <Bruce.Bannerman at dpi.vic.gov.au>:

> I've found a number of benefits with managing spatial data in a corporate
> database environment. These comments apply to both vector and image  data.
> I'm sure that these comments are equally pertinent to most RDBMS maintained
> spatial data. Some examples are:
>
> - Within a large organisation, it is possible to get rid of most of the
> islands of data that are hidden in a wide variety of departments. If
> implemented right, people come to see the database as the authoritive source
> of their data and respect it as such.
>
> - This can remove the situation where you get multiple copies of the same
> dataset around your organisation, with different people making their own
> independent edits to the data and expecting someone to reconcile the edits
> with the authoritative data set at a later time (if you're lucky).
>
> - It can also remove the situation where someone takes a copy of a critical
> data set and does not update it for several years, leaving business people
> making critical decisions on suspect data.
>
> - You can start managing your data for a given geographic phenomena as a
> single entity covering a large geographic region, without having to resort
> to tiles and all the related edge matching problems that we had in the past
> (e.g. mismatching pixels, lines, polygons that just end at the tile boundary
> or have an incorrect attibute on the matching sheet etc).
>
> - Some of the biggest advantages though, come from the corporate IT support
> that you come to rely on, e.g. regular backups, large disk capacity on fast
> SAN devices, secure access to data by authorised custodians, redundant
> databases for disaster recovery, point in time restoration of data etc.

Your points struck me hard, specially 1 and 2.

I have been wondering, and haven't found much literature on the
subject of applying GIS to the E&P chain. I can see it would be
useful, but can't exactly see where and how.

Also note, that I am coming from a geology background, now working
with reservoir geophysics, and that one of my previous jobs was with
GIS in the Brazilian Geological Survey.

I can see GIS helping with facilities management, decicion support,
but all that is not related to G&G (geology and geophysics), but more
to the engineering aspect of the E&P chain.

If any of you has any experience, or relevant pointers, I would like
you to share some.
This is important for me because I would like to get back into GIS,
and found that I need to convince my boss(es) that I need to pursue a
Master's in this field (Which is what I want).
-- 
Paulo Marcondes = PU1/PU2PIX
-22.915 -42.224 = GG86jc