It’s nearly time for the 2013 Esri Petroleum GIS Conference, or “the PUG”. This year the conference is being held May 7-9, and is back in the George R. Brown Convention Centre in Houston, Texas.
Last year before the conference I posted a blog that looked at the PUG papers back to 2009 and classified them based on their general topic.
This year, with many thanks to Charles Fried (former PUG Steering Committee Chairman) who kindly provided the historical data, I’ve been able to update the analysis with the papers presented from 2000 to 2012. Note that I’ve excluded Esri demonstrations and workshop sessions from the entire analysis.
First up, a quick reminder of the categories again:
- HSE – Health, Safety and Environment
- DMT – Data Management and Technology (includes ‘Databases’, ‘Geodesy’ & ‘Imagery’ categories)
- LMG – Land Management
- EXP – Exploration (includes ‘Geoscience’ & ‘Workflow and Analysis’ categories)
- PIP – Pipeline Integrity and Risk Management
- IFO/PRD – iField Operations and Production Optimization
The results are shown in the table and series of graphs below.
Table 1: Analysis Data
Table 1 shows the raw data for the analysis. Note the growth in the size of the PUG in 2005, where the number of user papers doubled. This is a reflection of how Esri have grown the event over time, and it would be interesting to compare the numbers of papers against conference delegate numbers over the years – next year’s update perhaps!
Number of Papers
Figures 1 and 2 plot the number of papers in each category.
Figure 1: Number of PUG Papers by Category
Figure 2: Number of PUG Papers by Year
You can see that the PUG has historically been dominated by papers on Technology (DMT), which is perhaps unsurprising, not only because Esri is a technology company, but also because the category itself is very wide, including the Esri technology itself, plus Databases, Data Management, Geodesy, Imagery, and Development.
Exploration (EXP) and Pipeline (PIP) have historically been secondary interest areas, although in recent years papers on HSE and Production (IFO/PROD) have become more frequent. Note the spike in HSE papers at the 2011 PUG which followed the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and the subsequent dip in HSE papers in 2012. It’ll be interesting to see how big this track is at this year’s PUG.
What’s surprising to me is that papers on Land (LMG) are still in a minority, especially given how many companies in the Vendor Fair/EXPO seem to specialise in this market.
Categories by Percentage
Figures 3 and 4 plot the % of sessions by category.
Figure 3: % of PUG Papers by Category
Figure 4: % of PUG Papers by Year
These graphs suggest that since the PUG started getting bigger around 2005 the proportion of papers in the Exploration (EXP) track has been steadily declining. This is a great shame, as those talks have often been among the most interesting, at least for a lapsed geoscientist like me!
Analysis aside, if you work with GIS in the E&P space but you’ve never been to the PUG (which has been going since 1990/91), then you should check it out – it’s a great conference for catching up on the latest developments from Esri, and seeing how the industry is using the ArcGIS platform.
This year Exprodat will be exhibiting at booth #723 where we’ll be offering a 10% discount on our Houston ArcGIS training event in August, as well as showing new technology including our own software and some examples of what you can do with ArcGIS Online.
If you’re coming please do drop by and say hello!
Posted by Chris Jepps, Technical Director, Exprodat.