Research and Markets: ESRI Petroleum User Group 2009, Houston

Research and Markets: ESRI Petroleum User Group 2009, Houston March 2009 Conference Proceedings

DUBLIN — (BUSINESS WIRE) — May 15, 2009 — Research and Markets ( http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/c361d8/technology_watch_f) has announced the addition of the " Technology Watch from The Data Room - ESRI Petroleum User Group 2009, Houston March 2009 Conference" report to their offering.

The basics of GIS have been laid out at earlier PUGs - this is actually the 19th! As ESRI software products director Clint Brown put it, 'it is a challenge to build big systems that really work.' This year sees more consolidation and a continuation of the technology shift to web services and browser clients. For users the story is similar. In the upstream many are concerned with getting their data in shape - from multiple legacy systems and following acquisitions that can take many years to work through the system. Companies are in general more involved with such 'basics' than with geoprocessing, making complex spatial queries. The picture in pipeline is arguably different - here GIS is so compelling, thanks to the regulator, that companies manage to find the resources to 'get it right.' This may involve a PODS or APDM database running alongside the GIS system. The move to the web opens up the possibility of 'mashups.' Presentations from the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator's Office and the Bureau of Land Management showed interesting use of mashup and geoprocessing in tandem. Opinions on the merits of the geodatabase differ. For the data purists, having such a data staging post means more data duplication and data management headaches. Others are more than happy with ESRI's concept of a 'logical collection of datasets.' One curious aspect of the PUG was that we only heard mention of .NET once, on day three. Most GUI code we saw (peeking over developers' shoulders) was Adobe Flex2.

A panel discussion moderated by Oil IT Journal editor Neil McNaughton debated the intersection of GIS and the 'digital oilfield.' Panelists from Chevron, the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center, DCP Midstream and Panhandle Energy offered insights into how SCADA and other real time sources were combined into a map view, facilitating surveillance and optimizing operations.

Highlights