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3rd OGEO workshop ‘DownUnder’

The initiative on Earth Observation in the Oil and Gas industry (OGEO) had its 3rd workshop held on the 14th of September 2012 on the other side of the World – from a European perspective that is, Perth in Western Australia was the destination and Woodside Energy Ltd, the host for the day.

The time and location was chosen to coincide with another major Oil & Gas industry event and to attract a number of industry people already in town. The OGEO workshop had 86 external attendants, with 27 % coming from Europe. Participants form 9 Oil and Gas companies were represented, such as Shell, BP, Chevron and Total.

The day was filled with 21 presentations and gave a good overview of EO applications in the Oil and Gas industry. The themes covered were Environment, MetOcean and Geomatics / Infrastructure mapping with some of the talks also touching on emergency response activities using EO data. The European initiative GMES and its potential benefits for industry was discussed by a representative from ESA and the feedback from the audience was very positive and even the program is in place for many years now – not too many people in Australia know about it in detail. Another interesting talk came from KSAT in Norway and there fast response capabilities in EO after any emergency, which is quite an important operational aspect for the O&G industry. The importance of Earth Observation for MetOcean parameters was highlighted by different presenters, but a presentation by Total, France showing the integration of ‘near real time EO’ with ocean modelling to improve oil spill trajectories can be viewed as ‘state of the art’ use of Earth Observation technology. The use of EO systems at the opposite scale – small UAV’s (Unmanned Airborne Vehicles) – was demonstrated by a Australian company WorlseyParson and allows the integration of small scale observation into the bigger picture of data acquired via satellites.

OGEO is now also an official sub-committee of the OGP (International Association of Oil and Gas Producers – www.ogp.org.uk) under the Geomatics Committee, which was announced during the workshop by its current chairman

All in all, a very successful event and with a 2013 workshop being planned again in Europe OGEO members are looking forward to a successful continuation of the OGEO collaboration between the O&G industry, EO service providers and the R&D / Academia world.

The final program with abstract is published on the website: www.esa-orgeo.org and the presentations will be made available as they are being released by the authors. The workshop summary report is currently being compiled and will also be made available via the ESA website and distributed to interested people.

If you would like to find out more about OGEO please contact the OGEO via OGP or send an email via EARSC.

Dr. Peter Hausknecht
OGEO chairman

OGEO