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The impact of geodesy and GPS on GIS data management in international oil field operations

Stigant Enterprises Incorporated

Corresponding author: J. Stigant, jonSCE@worldnet.att.net

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Over the last 20 years, the process of measuring and recording a place or position on the surface of the earth has gone through a revolutionary change. There has been a switch from alidades to GPS, from slide rules to pentium computers, from manual to automatic recording and processing of spatial data. The changes include introduction and implementation of two satellite surveying systems (Transit and GPS), transfer of computations to high-speed computers, and processing and graphic presentation of spatial data in real time. Within the GPS domain, techniques have been developed to overcome degradation of the data by the government and to permit positioning to an accuracy of 2–3 mm in some cases.

Most companies have experienced the problem of relating data collected with the new system(s) with the older mapped (often not digital) data. These data are often referenced to different origins. Some major oil companies support a survey staff to educate operational and technical personnel in correct handling of spatial data. A second but very important aspect of such a staff is to assist with the survey technology changes to prevent, as far as possible, misplacement of surveys (geophysical, well, downhole, pipeline, facilities). During technology transitions, the survey staff must manage technology changes to ensure maximum benefit and competitive position to the company while minimizing the risk to a specific project and to recovery of assets in an entire region.

But, in spite of the automation and ease of use of survey technology, professional surveyors still find a significant lack of knowledge among those who implement these surveys in the field. Often this is also true of office staffs responsible for processing, storing, and preparing maps of the data from them. This lack of knowledge is a significant risk to any company because GIS represents another revolutionary change . . . [Full Text of this Article]