GIS technology has been used in ‘conventional’ petroleum for many years and is now being used increasingly in the development of continuous ‘unconventional’ resource plays such as shale gas, shale oil and coal bed methane.
This makes a lot of sense – most (if not all) of these resources are located onshore and GIS’s ability to integrate satellite imagery, network analysis and hydrological analysis (traditional heartlands for GIS) with more traditional petroleum analysis techniques means that it is arguably even more important in unconventionals.