a

ESRIN Via Galileo Galilei - Casella Postale 64 - 00044 Frascati - Italy Tel. (39) 06 941801 - Fax (39) 06 94180 280

f D O C U M E N T

SATELLITE EARTH

OBSERVATION

EXPLOITATION FOR THE

OIL AND GAS SECTOR

NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND OPPORTUNITIES

WORKSHOP SUMMARY REPORT

(HELD AT ESA/ESRIN, 14-15 SEPT 2010)

prepared by/préparé par Ola Gråbak, ESA reference/réference EOEP-DTEX-EOPS-REP-10-0003 issue/édition 1.0 date of issue/date d’édition November 10, 2010 Document type/type de document Report Distribution/distribution External

Oil and Gas Workshop Summary Report

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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S

1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 1

2 WORKSHOP OVERVIEW .................................................................................... 2

3 WORSKSHOP FINDINGS .................................................................................... 3

4 WAY FORWARD .................................................................................................. 7

APPENDIX A : WORKSHOP PROGRAM ................................................................................. 9

APPENDIX B : WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS ........................................................................ 10

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1 INTRODUCTION On 14-15 September 2010, the European Space Agency (ESA) Directorate of Earth Observation Programmes (EOP) hosted a workshop aimed at assessing new opportunities for the application of earth observation (EO) within the oil and gas (O&G) sector. This was driven in part by the fact that we are now entering a new era of satellite EO. The next decade will see advances in the range and capabilities of instruments currently in orbit, and the transition of EO from an R&D tool to technology that provides, on a long-term sustainable basis, a wide range operational information services about the Earth’s environment. The joint EU-ESA initiative of Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) will be a major factor in this process. A key element in encouraging uptake of EO-based services by user communities is ease of access to data. Within GMES, a change in data policy is being proposed to provide free, transparent and open access to systematic pre-planned data for the ESA Sentinel fleet of satellites. For the Oil and Gas industry, which represents one of the largest commercial groups of EO users, these developments could present an opportunity to save costs and add value to existing services at every step of a project lifecycle; e.g. site feasibility, onshore and offshore exploration of new prospects, pipeline routing, or the optimization of oilfield productivity. It also offers a way to address growing sensitivity to health and safety matters and environmental sustainability, particularly as the industry explores prospects in more challenging environments. For EO service industry, the growing potential of EO within the O&G sector represents an opportunity to expand commercial business. Capitalizing on the benefits of this opportunity will depend on the EO service providers better understanding the requirements of the oil and gas users and in doing so better communicating the range of products and services available to key decision makers within the industry. The workshop represented an initial step towards more sustained dialogue between the O&G industry and EO community, with the following long term objectives:

• To ensure that key oil and gas industry personnel are aware of the capabilities of the current and new generation of earth observation sensors in relation to new technical operating challenges, obligations relating to legislation and new geographical areas of activity .

• To provide a forum where the combination of key personnel from both the oil and gas and space industries can exchange ideas and develop new approaches and possibilities for the enhanced use of earth observation within the oil and gas industry.

• To provide insight to ESA and other data providers on how the use of earth observation data and products may be assisted by changes to procedures and policies.

• To communicate evolving oil and gas industry requirements to satellite operators and service providers so that the space sector can work to meet these requirements.

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s 2 WORKSHOP OVERVIEW

The workshop was organized into one day for offshore topics and a second day for onshore topics. Each day was sub-divided into plenary sessions containing perspectives on opportunities for EO in the oil and gas industry from both O&G and EO representatives, and parallel sessions addressing

• Exploration, • Environmental Sustainability, • Infrastructure and Transportation.

In addition, there were plenary discussion sessions at the end of each day to share and compare the findings of the parallel sessions earlier. The workshop closed with a final plenary session drawing together the overall recommendations on the way forward. The workshop program is given in Annex A. The individual presentations in the separate sessions that have been cleared for public release are provided at http://earth.eo.esa.int/workshops/gasoil2010/index.html. The workshop was attended by 104 external participants from all around the world. A detailed list of all attendees is given in Appendix B. As expected, the majority of participants (44%) were from the EO service industry, but almost a third of the participants were representing the oil and gas industry including the majors such as BP, ENI, Petrobras, Statoil, Shell, Total, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Woodside.

Figure 1. Participant category breakdown

(*Consultants, universities, space agencies and satellite systems and data providers)

Oil and Gas industry

29%

EO service companies

44%

*other27%

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s In order to encourage free and open expression, it was agreed at the start of the workshop that no sourcing of individual comments or statements would take place in the reporting from the workshop.

3 WORSKSHOP FINDINGS This workshop report contains a summary of main observations made during the parallel sessions during the two days. The findings have been grouped according to which community it originated from. For clarity, and to avoid duplication, all general observation (not specific to neither offshore nor onshore), are given in the Final Plenary observations. This report does not contain details on technical discussion in relation to individual presentations. Day 1: Off-Shore: Main observations From Oil and Gas industry

- There is a trend towards exploration in deeper waters and more remote locations like the Arctic, requiring more specialized EO derived information both for planning and operations (e.g. NRT high-resolution sea-ice and iceberg information for tactical operations),

- Better availability of archived EO data would be required for EO to play a greater role in

strategic decision making and risk mitigation (statistical analysis and climate change trends based on historical archives of met-ocean parameters),

- EO based information on physical oceanographic measurements like; water levels, waves,

tides, currents, winds (storms) are being routinely used, but there is still work to be done in the characterization of some key features such as wave steepness and extreme waves. Special attention will be required for verification and validation of these EO techniques to complex areas such as the Arctic and shallow coastal waters. Water level information could also be improved by reprocessing archived Altimeter data into better earth geoids estimates,

- The demand for integration of EO with numerical met-ocean models is a growing trend

(e.g. ocean current, wave and sea-ice forecasting) impacting the requirement for EO products to contain fully documented meta-data information on accuracies,

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s - There is a growing need for offshore environmental monitoring(including gas flares),

especially for remote and highly sensitive areas, but no agreed standards or guidelines exist for how EO based products and services could be applied

- Dealing with offshore security issues (e.g. piracy and terrorism against platforms and

vessels) represents a growing opportunity for the development of new EO based services.

From the EO service industry

- EO oil spill monitoring is now routine for many areas, but expert interpretation is still required to distinguish pollution from natural seepage. Extraction of more complex information(oil types) and operation in more complex environments (e.g. Ice infested waters) requires further validation and verification,

- Cost is still an issue in accessing VHR data for monitoring sea-ice and icebergs, but the

GMES Sentinel data policy is going in the right direction and will ensure greater predictability with respect to data costs and availabilities,

- Providing EO based products and services to the Arctic could increase significantly the

demand for satellite telecommunication bandwidth. Initial feedback and trials show that using existing infrastructure could prove unreliable and costly.

Day 2 On-Shore: Main Observations From the Oil and Gas industry

- Retrieval of basic surface geology from EO satellite optical/IR imagery is a mature technique. Surface geology from SAR data is less mature and needs additional verification (in particular for more complex techniques such as coherence, polarimetry etc). The use of radar data is well established for onshore infrastructure & transportation. For this broad theme there is a large domination by INSAR (and in particular the PSinSAR technique) for precise terrain deformation mapping and monitoring,

- Data fusion (in particular EO + seismic) is a promising area and could benefit from

dedicated R&D, - The importance of seismic data was emphasized on several occasions – however, EO

derived information (e.g. on lithological boundaries, structures etc) can be helpful in interpreting features observed in the upper parts of the seismic data,

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s - EO-derived information is also being used to support planning of seismic data acquisition

campaigns. Such campaigns represent complex resource management challenges, in particular with respect to moving and placing heavy equipment and sensitive monitoring instruments. Therefore, having precise information on slopes, ground cover and properties can avoid accidents and operational downtime of assets such as vibroseis trucks,

- Standards for environmental baselines for impact assessments are seen as useful for

corporate sustainability reporting. Such standards could evolve from commonalities between players within the sector; first activities exist such as the Environmental Stewardship policy within Chevron.

From the EO service industry

- Extensive archives of altimeter measurements have resulted in an interesting capability to measure gravity variations in support of other geological mapping techniques. The data are available free of charge and this is expected to become a widely used asset, in particular in support of Arctic operations,

- Hyper-spectral information is of interest but it is not clear what can actually be detected, in

particular using space based lower spatial resolution sensors (most current work uses airborne systems). As many variations in natural conditions are not caused by oil and gas operations, the use of hyper-spectral capabilities as an operational monitoring tool is by no means mature and would require extensive development to bring such a capability to operational readiness. However, it is expected that hyper-spectral technology from space will be a major breakthrough for exploitation within the oil & gas sector.

Final Plenary observations

- There is a need for a better collaboration between the Oil and Gas sector and the EO service industry. The collaboration could facilitate:

• The transfer of capabilities currently under development into operations, • Improved access to the EO services information and best practice guidelines on how

to use such information within the oil & gas industrial working practices and environment,

• The development of standards for EO product specifications and associated quality certification, making it easier for oil and gas companies to compare different offerings from the EO service industry,

• Improved communication of O&G sector requirements for EO based products and services to the EO service industry

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s • New licensing schemes for multi-use. There is an interest from O&G companies in

buying data and services separately in order to maintain ownership of underlying data and conduct later analysis using same imagery,

• Easier access for O&G geo-information on what EO capabilities exist, what imagery is available and which applications this imagery will support.

- Many of the participants from the O&G industry at this workshop come from the technical

geo-matics units of the companies. They have to internally ‘market’ the capabilities of EO in order to have this source of information used in project activities. To do this more effectively, better information sharing between oil and gas companies is required in order to increase overall industry EO awareness and facilitate training. A set of user cases (white papers) would be useful to illustrate the value and increase awareness and knowledge of the benefits that EO can bring. These examples should be for sites where there is no conflict or commercial interest for individual companies.

- Collaboration among oil companies is no more difficult than for other industry sectors

(although some sensitivities must be respected about site-specific information). There is currently no effective industry-wide mechanism for collaboration to jointly investigate wider use of EO derived information.

- Due to the 40-50 year lifespan of an oil and gas development project, long term EO data

availability is critical in promoting EO as a reliable source of information supporting a project from exploration, via operations to de-commissioning,

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4 WAY FORWARD The following recommendations for actions to be taken were proposed by the workshop following discussion in plenary: Action on ESA and the European Association of European Remote Sensing Companies (EARSC):

• Fully documented EO Service specifications (information content, accuracies and availabilities) for services that are mature and relevant to the Oil and Gas sector,

Implement a mechanism for ensuring improved information exchange between the two industry sectors with respect to EO based services capabilities and Oil and Gas geo-information requirements. The mechanism should provide:

• A guide-line as to what EO missions, sensors and imagery exist, and what type of applications this imagery would support.

• An on-line environment for exchange of experiences and ideas between the two sectors, • Fully documented case examples (white papers) with the aim of establishing industrial best

practice guidelines for the use of EO. The case examples should at least contain:

• the capabilities of EO, • how the information is being used within the Oil and gas companies, • the benefits generated in terms of greater efficiency, improved safety and cost

savings clearly and precisely spelt out • information on limitations and constraints.

A phased action implementation approach with agreed priorities, timelines and procurement methods shall be in place before end 2010. First actions shall be initiated early 2011 as part of the ESA VAE program. Action on the Oil and Gas sector:

• serve as the interface between the Oil and Gas industry and ESA for ensuring communication and coordination of space related activities,

Identify an organizational administrative body/group to interface with ESA. This body/group should

• to the widest extent reflect the different geo-information requirements resulting from Oil and Gas projects (exploration, environmental sustainability, operations, transports etc),

• coordinate industry wide issues relating to EO, • investigate and coordinate the set up of Joint Industry projects to address EO development

activities.

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s An informal Oil and Gas Earth Observation (OGEO) working group should continue the initiative of the workshop in taking forward collaboration and acting as a focal point for dialogue between the two communities until this more formal group has been identified. Initially, this will consist of the workshop steering committee. The Oil and Gas sector shall draft an action plan by the end of 2010 responding to the above mentioned action.

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APPENDIX A : WORKSHOP PROGRAM

Figure 1. The ESA Oil and Gas Workshop Programme.

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APPENDIX B : WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS

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