The primary activities of the company focus on exploring for, developing and producing natural gas, crude oil and natural gas liquids internationally. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, the E&P Company had nearly 6,000 employees in operations in the United States, Canada, Egypt, the North Sea, Australia and Argentina, at the time of the GeoPortal project planning
Business Challenge
There had always been employees at the E&P company who rely on maps to do their jobs, and these advanced map users would build their own maps with ArcGIS for Desktop, a powerful mapping tool. But with its impressive features array, Esri ArcGIS isn't for everybody, especially casual users. Depending on the size of the project, building a map with ArcGIS can be time-consuming for even experienced users, while the associated load times can be long, and the data latency issues can be frustrating. Furthermore, supporting desktop tools like ArcGIS put pressure on their IT administrators to keep their applications stocked with the most current spatial data.
The E& P company’s GIS department launched an initiative to develop a new GeoPortal. The goal of the project was to make maps and spatial data available to all employees who needed it, especially casual users who don't have the time or knowledge to build maps with ArcGIS.
The GIS team envisioned a GeoPortal that would transform oil and gas data into geographic information to enable users throughout the organization to view critical exploration and production information within the context of a map to be able to make better-informed decisions. The project would require innovations to implement enterprise wide geographic information systems (GIS) to keep the company at the forefront of the oil and gas industry.
Solution
Today, the GeoPortal offers easy access to maps, spatial layers, documents, pictures and videos. It also provides map apps that are pre-built, regularly updated maps that can be viewed in the GeoPortal's built-in map viewer. “The GeoPortal is an intranet website for getting to maps and data where we've done the legwork for our users," explained the GIS department head.
The E&P company connected their own GeoPortal to Energy Map Services, a suite of web mapping services from S&P Global that enables mapping applications to show the latest energy information.
"Without content, our GeoPortal would fall flat," the GIS department head said. "Providing rich, up-to-date data from both internal sources and from vendors such as S&P Global really encourages users to come to the GeoPortal for maps and data."
Access to well data from S&P Global’s Energy Map Services portal, allows users to combine internally sourced spatial data with S&P Global information to get a more complete picture of areas of interest. The company also is assured that it is providing its users with the latest and most complete information, since the spatial data is streamed direct from S&P Global servers. And because S&P Global hosts the information on its servers, the company’s IT administrators don't have to spend valuable time loading or managing the content.
Integrating the services was easy, said the GIS department head. "S&P Global did all the work, and all we had to do was make the connection.
In addition, the E&P company uses S&P Global Enerdeq™ Web Services to provide more information on wells to its GeoPortal users. They can click on a well in a map to see additional details about the well and quickly generate a dynamic report such as a scout ticket, or a production summary.
"I'm very impressed that S&P Global has gone down this path," the GIS department head said. "They're leading the vendor community in terms of offering these types of mapping services."
Business Benefits
- Enables the E&P company to offer richer geographic energy content throughout their GeoPortal
- Provides easy access to S&P Global energy spatial information for the company’s growing community of map users who don't have the time or experience to build maps using complex desktop mapping tools
- Delivers the most current well information available to map users so they can make the best-informed decisions
- Eliminated the burden on the company’s IT administrators to manage or upload data, because data is hosted on S&P Global servers
Providing rich, up-to-date data from both internal sources and from vendors such as S&P Global really encourages users to come to the GeoPortal for maps and data.