Blogs

Creating Layer Files with Python

30/05/2013
I have experienced, and no doubt you have too, the tedium of saving out many layer fi...

Creating a Multi-scale Geological Map

14/05/2013
One of the key features of a GIS is the ability to view spatial data at any scale. To...

Esri PUG Papers 2000-2012

29/04/2013
It’s nearly time for the 2013 Esri Petroleum GIS Conference, or “the PUG&...

Top 10 ArcGIS Printing Checks

18/04/2013
Turn good maps into great maps by running some final checks before you print it ...

Tip 24: Successful Editing

03/04/2013
For anyone new to ArcGIS, using the editing tools can initially appear a little trick...

Benchmarking GIS Performance

11/03/2013
Benchmarking GIS Performance: A Multi-client Example In this blog, which follow...

Measuring GIS Effectiveness

04/03/2013
Measuring GIS Effectiveness: Exprodat’s GIS Maturity Matrix Approach How ...

Plotting Dip and Strike Readings

25/02/2013
Dips and strikes? Dip and strike readings are simple but important geological measur...

Tip 23: Loading Grids to ArcGIS

19/02/2013
As geoscientists, we need to bring into ArcGIS various types of gridded data, includi...

Creating Map Books with ArcGIS

28/01/2013
Increase mapping productivity using Data Driven Pages If you want to create a PDF ma...

Stop Making Basic Positioning Mistakes!

11/01/2013
Make a geodetic New Year’s resolution: stop making basic positioning mistakes! ...

Tip 22: Using Raster Catalogs

03/01/2013
Using a Raster Catalog in ArcCatalog You can use a Raster Catalog to store high volu...

Using OGP's EPSG Area Polygons

15/10/2012
The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP) recently released EPSG A...

Using Tool Parameters in ArcGIS

04/09/2012
Tool parameters are used to set values for elements within a script, allowing you to ...

Tracking Company Assets in Real Time

13/08/2012
This year two teams from Exprodat decided to enter the Oxfam Trailwalker 2012 event. ...

Creating Geological Block Diagrams

24/07/2012
Most geologists like a nice geological block diagram and it is relatively easy to cre...

Converting Rasters to XYZ ASCII Files

06/07/2012
Raster data like digital elevation models (e.g. SRTM), bathymetry (e.g...

Migrating Legacy Seabed Surveys to SSDM

12/06/2012
Seabed survey datasets are assets of enormous value for offshore operators. Environme...

Creating File Listings with Python

28/05/2012
Part of many data management projects is keeping a record of what files are where. Of...

Top 10 Uses of GIS in Oil and Gas

04/05/2012
Why should we use GIS? This is probably the question we hear most often in our discus...

A Brief History of Esri PUG Sessions

17/04/2012
The annual Esri Petroleum User Group Conference (or PUG for short) is now called the ...

Tip 21: Georeferencing Vector Data

30/03/2012
Georeferencing images such as scanned maps are a common way of importing legacy or pa...

Tip 20: ArcGIS 10 Editing Sessions

13/03/2012
As oil and gas companies upgrade their ArcGIS applications from ArcGIS 9 to ArcGIS 10...

Mapping Gas Hydrate Occurrence

28/02/2012
Mapping gas hydrate occurrence in permafrost regions using a play fairway mapping app...

4 Ways to Streamline Unconventional E&P Projects

31/01/2012
GIS technology has been used in ‘conventional’ petroleum for many years a...

Managing Cultural Data with ModelBuilder and Python

07/11/2011
Cultural data which E&P organisations rely on for exploration and commercial deve...

Enhancing Imagery using ArcGIS

25/10/2011
One of the many questions that I get asked when delivering a GIS training course is &...

Sneak Preview Demos of TGUA

18/10/2011
In my last blog I provided a sneak preview of Team-GIS Unconventionals Analyst (TGUA)...

Assessing Coal Bed Methane Acreage

11/10/2011
As more and more oil and gas companies search for opportunities in the unconventional...

Tip 19: Using Buffers to Model Lateral Migration

03/10/2011
We often use ArcGIS Desktop’s buffer tool simply to select areas within set dis...

Using GIS in Unconventionals Developments

28/09/2011
Exciting times here at Exprodat as we prepare to release a new software tool for the ...

Tip 18: Selecting From Multiple Areas

03/08/2011
Selecting features in ArcMap is usually pretty straightforward, particularly when the...

Environmental and Seabed Constraints Analysis in ArcGIS

26/07/2011
GIS for environmental data management and analysis in E&P At Exprodat we recentl...

Correctly Aligning Features in ArcMap: 3

22/07/2011
In my previous posts (part 1 and part 2), I described how ArcMap warns users that a c...

Correctly Aligning Features in ArcMap: 2

20/07/2011
In my last post (part 1), I described two scenarios when ArcMap undertakes coordinate...

Correctly Aligning Features in ArcMap: 1

18/07/2011
As mentioned in a previous blog, ArcMap can correctly align layers of geographic data...

Making Movies with ArcGIS Explorer

15/06/2011
In the plenary session of Esri's PUG Conference 2011 they showed a video from Anadark...

Using the ArcGIS Correlation Coefficient

08/06/2011
Investigating the Correlation Between Formation Pressure and Depth using ArcGIS ...

Tip 17: Reselecting Highlighted Features

03/06/2011
In ArcGIS Desktop selecting features is often an essential step before copying, modif...

Tip 16: Polygon Editing

12/05/2011
We often need to use editing tools for digitising a new object such as a point, line ...

Seismic 2D shot points in ArcGIS 10

11/05/2011
(Want to go straight to the download page on ArcGIS.com? No problem) For a while now...

Tip 15: Exporting PDFs

15/04/2011
Although there are numerous formats for exporting your finished map to, Portable Docu...

Extruding data in ArcGIS Explorer 1500

11/04/2011
In a blog last year we posted an ArcGIS Explorer 1200 add-in that allowed y...

Tip 14: Exporting a Map with Geospatial Location

01/03/2011
We spend a lot of time working on our GIS analysis and then creating maps of our resu...

Tip 13: Hyperlinking to Document Pages

02/02/2011
Hyperlinking allows users to establish a connection from one information source to an...

Automating your workflows with Python

08/12/2010
In today’s E&P industry the maxim “time is money” could never b...

Tip 12: Coordinates and ArcGIS

04/11/2010
Geographic data is comprised of geographic features – such as wells, fields or ...

Checking Residuals Bias in Geological Mapping

26/10/2010
In my last blog post I discussed the case for mapping the residuals in order to help ...

Promoting GIS in your Workplace

19/10/2010
Are you working in an organisation that you feel could really benefit from GIS, but d...

Complex Symbols and Cartographic Representations

03/09/2010
I want to create a complex custom symbol for use with area fills on a map. In ArcMap ...

Extruding data in ArcGIS Explorer 1200

18/08/2010
ESRI’s ArcGIS Explorer (AGX) is a free downloadable GIS viewer which allows vie...

Measuring the Quality of Predictions: 3

14/07/2010
Assessing the Quality of the Modelling of Continuous Variables in the 2D Domain &ndas...

Measuring the Quality of Predictions: 2

12/07/2010
Assessing the Quality of the Modelling of Continuous Variables in the 2D Domain &ndas...

Tip 11: ESRI Tips and Shortcuts

08/07/2010
If you're an ArcGIS Desktop user you might be interested to know that there are a num...

Measuring the Quality of Predictions: 1

07/07/2010
Assessing the Quality of the Modelling of Continuous Variables in the 2D Domain &ndas...

Tip 10: ESRI Symbols Fonts

05/07/2010
Recently someone asked me how to use ESRI well symbols for bullets in MS Word documen...

Crowdsourcing and ArcGIS Server 10

06/05/2010
With the imminent arrival of ArcGIS Server 10 and its template-based online spatial&n...

Tip 9: Relative Paths

05/05/2010
When you start up a new ArcMap document, you almost immediately and probably unknowin...

Tip 8: Geoprocessing Masks

27/04/2010
In GIS terminology a ‘mask’ is a spatial layer that one uses to limit the...

Behavioural Economics and Innovation

08/04/2010
I was very interested by a recent blog by David Bamford on the subject of behavioural...

Reduce Your Oil Exploration Risk

17/03/2010
International oil and gas companies are presented with so many exploration opportunit...

Shale Gas Well Reserve Mapping with GIS

11/03/2010
Unconventional Gas The interest in unconventional gas exploration has significantly ...

Tip 7: Convert Date Formats

15/02/2010
We sometimes find datasets containing attribute data that we can’t use effectiv...

Around 2800 Blocks in 80 days

05/02/2010
The UK government launched its 26th offshore oil and gas licensing round last week. T...

Tip 6: Animation in ArcGIS Desktop

28/01/2010
With 48 toolbars at version 9.3.1 ArcGIS Desktop has a lot of hidden functionality th...

How Big is your Training Gain? Part 2

21/01/2010
In part 1 of “How big is your training gain?”, I provided a simple spread...

Landfill Sites vs. Acreage: Worlds Apart?

20/01/2010
As if running a GIS business wasn't hard enough work, I recently signed up for a...

Tip 5: GDB Attribute Domains

11/01/2010
Attribute Domains for ArcGIS File Geodatabases are arguably the most important d...

How Big is your Training Gain? Part 1

07/01/2010
Exprodat is focused on helping our clients in the petroleum sector make better use of...

Santa’s Ballistic Delivery System

21/12/2009
“So,” said Santa, his grin widening, “we can get rid of the reindee...

Adding Cross Sections to ArcGIS Explorer

03/12/2009
ESRI’s ArcGIS Explorer (AGX) is a free downloadable GIS viewer which allows vie...

Tip 4: Joins and Relates

06/11/2009
One of the main issues that users seem to need a bit of help with in ArcGIS Desktop i...

Tip 3: Getting Help

03/11/2009
One of the problems I faced when starting to use GIS was that there was so much to le...

Enormous 3D Arrows in the Sky!

26/10/2009
ESRI’s ArcGIS Explorer (AGX) is a free GIS viewer which allows the user to view...

Who Owns Your GIS?

15/10/2009
It’s become clear to me through a number of engagements with E&P companies ...

Locating Sites for Offshore Wind Farms

08/10/2009
In the past four decades the United Kingdom Continental Shelf (UKCS) has proven to be...

Tip 2: Tabular XY Data

02/10/2009
The second in our series of Petroleum GIS Tips where members of our training team exp...

Risk Segments: Vectors 3, Rasters 1

01/10/2009
A lot of petroleum GIS conference presentations I've seen about play fairway mapping ...

Zen and the Art of Web Mapping

30/09/2009
When I first started working with web-based GIS, oooh, back in 2001 or so, it seemed ...

Using GIS to Rank UKCS Blocks

29/09/2009
With the UK's 26th Licensing Round expected to be announced in January 2010 its likel...

Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis 1

23/09/2009
Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) is a group of techniques used to describe an...

Tip 1: Georeferencing

15/09/2009
Welcome to the first of our Petroleum GIS Tips series, where members of our training ...

The Investment that Keeps on Giving

14/09/2009
At Exprodat we often have to communicate the value of training, especially when times...