Off-Sea Evaluation of Unlicensed Mining Blocks in the North Sea

Introduction

Background

Agip Oil logo (General Italian Oil Company)

This is a hypothetical situation in which oil companies interested purchasing licensed or non-licensed wells off-shore Britain, need assistance from Carleton University using open source software to reduce costs. A variety of factors need to be considered to determine which wells are prime targets for each company to purchase.

The following is a list of factors used in this study:

• Distance from Coastline
• Depth of Well
• Licensed or Unlicensed (Ownership)
• Environmental Concerns
• Legal Boundaries
• Proximity to neighboring cells

Methods

Software Preparation

Download Quantuam GIS from QGIS.org The most recent version of QGIS is Lisboa 1.7 which is available in Windows, Linux, MacOS X, Android and numerous other formats. This walk-through uses Windows for the duration of the analysis.

Data Collection

The well and coastline data was collected from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (UK), downloaded from: DECC Download Directory.

Data Preparation

Various layers needed to clipped so that were relevant to the study.

• Wells file contained points that were both on-shore and off-shore. The wells file needed to be clipped by the coastline file
• Coastline polygon had to be reduced to only include the mainland, removing Ireland and small islands

Results

Ideal Well has the following characteristics

• Close to processing Plants
• Low Water Depth
• No current ownership

North Sea Oil Wells off the coast of Scotland, including the 0.5km buffers from the coast