Off-Sea Evaluation of Unlicensed Mining Blocks in the North Sea
Contents
Introduction
Background
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 Used | Data Format | Data Source |
---|---|---|
Boundary of Vancouver Island | Vector Polygon | Scholars Geoportal Layer: Dissemination Blocks - Cartographic Boundary File (DB-CBF), 2011 Census / Producer: Statistics Canada |
Lakes | Vector Polygon | Scholars Geoportal Layer: Minor Water Regions (MNWTR) / Producer: DTMI Spatial Inc. |
Parks | Vector Polygon | Scholars Geoportal Layer: Parks and Recreation - Region / Producer: DTMI Spatial Inc. |
Landcover | Vector Polygon | GeoBase Layer: Land Cover / Producer: Circa 2000 |
DEM | Raster | GeoBase Layer: Canadian Digital Elevation Data / Producer: Natural Resources Canada |
Road Density | Raster | Created Data |
Grey Wolf Range | Vector Points & Polygon | Created Data |
Deforestation on Vancouver Island | Vector Polygon | Created Data |
Hunting Camps | Vector Polygon | Created Data |
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