MARINE ZONE MANAGEMENT AND THE EPBC ACT—HOW ENVIRONMENTAL MARINE GEOLOGICAL INFORMATION PROVIDES CERTAINTY FOR PETROLEUM EXPLORATION

2007 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 329 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.T. Harris ◽  
A. Heap ◽  
A. Post ◽  
T. Whiteway ◽  
A. Potter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Marine Conservation ◽  
Biological Data ◽  
Acoustic Properties ◽  
Petroleum Exploration ◽  
Conservation Priorities ◽  
Multiple Use ◽  
Spatial Coverage ◽  
Epbc Act

To protect the diversity of marine life in Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), the federal parliament has passed the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999. The Act is being implemented through the design of a national representative system of marine protected areas (MPAs) that will place under protection a representative portion of Australia’s EEZ by 2012. There have already been 13 MPAs nominated for the southeast region in 2006.Limited biological data in Australia’s EEZ has resulted in biophysical information compiled by Geoscience Australia being used as a proxy for seabed biodiversity in support of marine conservation planning. Information we use to characterise the seabed includes bathymetry, geomorphology, acoustic properties, sediment properties, and slope and sediment mobilisation due to waves and tides. To better characterise habitats on the Australian continental shelf, Geoscience Australia is creating seascape maps (similar to geological facies maps) that integrate these multiple layers of spatial data, and which are useful for the prediction of the distribution of biodiversity in Australia’s EEZ. This information provides 100% spatial coverage based on objective, multivariate statistical methods and offers certainty for managers and stakeholders including the oil and gas industry, who are involved with designing Australia’s national MPA system. Certainty for industries operating in the EEZ is enhanced by a reproducible, science-based approach for identifying conservation priorities and the classification of sea floor types within multiple use areas.

scholarly journals An ABC-optimized fuzzy ELECTRE approach for assessing petroleum potential at the petroleum system level

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 580-597
Author(s):  
Mohamad Hamzeh ◽  
Farid Karimipour
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Spatial Models ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Essential Elements ◽  
Petroleum System ◽  
Petroleum Exploration ◽  
System Level ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Petroleum Potential ◽  
Spatial Data Sets

AbstractAn inevitable aspect of modern petroleum exploration is the simultaneous consideration of large, complex, and disparate spatial data sets. In this context, the present article proposes the optimized fuzzy ELECTRE (OFE) approach based on combining the artificial bee colony (ABC) optimization algorithm, fuzzy logic, and an outranking method to assess petroleum potential at the petroleum system level in a spatial framework using experts’ knowledge and the information available in the discovered petroleum accumulations simultaneously. It uses the characteristics of the essential elements of a petroleum system as key criteria. To demonstrate the approach, a case study was conducted on the Red River petroleum system of the Williston Basin. Having completed the assorted preprocessing steps, eight spatial data sets associated with the criteria were integrated using the OFE to produce a map that makes it possible to delineate the areas with the highest petroleum potential and the lowest risk for further exploratory investigations. The success and prediction rate curves were used to measure the performance of the model. Both success and prediction accuracies lie in the range of 80–90%, indicating an excellent model performance. Considering the five-class petroleum potential, the proposed approach outperforms the spatial models used in the previous studies. In addition, comparing the results of the FE and OFE indicated that the optimization of the weights by the ABC algorithm has improved accuracy by approximately 15%, namely, a relatively higher success rate and lower risk in petroleum exploration.

Generating spatial data for marine conservation and management

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay Aylesworth ◽  
Ratanawaree Phoonsawat ◽  
Pholphisin Suvanachai ◽  
Amanda C. J. Vincent
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Marine Conservation ◽  
Conservation And Management

NEW DIRECTIONS IN GEOSCIENCE TECHNOLOGY FOR PETROLEUM EXPLORATION IN THE NEW AGE

1994 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 189
Author(s):  
T. L. Burnett
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Seismic Energy ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Transport Processes ◽  
Source Rocks ◽  
P Wave ◽  
Petroleum Exploration ◽  
S Wave ◽  
Seismic Acquisition

As economics of the oil and gas industry become more restrictive, the need for new means of improving exploration risks and reducing expenses is becoming more acute. Partnerships between industry and academia are making significant improvements in four general areas: Seismic acquisition, reservoir characterisation, quantitative structural modelling, and geochemical inversion.In marine seismic acquisition the vertical cable concept utilises hydrophones suspended at fixed locations vertically within the water column by buoys. There are numerous advantages of vertical cable technology over conventional 3-D seismic acquisition. In a related methodology, 'Borehole Seismic', seismic energy is passed between wells and valuable information on reservoir geometry, porosity, lithology, and oil saturation is extracted from the P-wave and S-wave data.In association with seismic methods of determining the external geometry and the internal properties of a reservoir, 3-dimensional sedimentation-simulation models, based on physical, hydrologic, erosional and transport processes, are being utilised for stratigraphic analysis. In addition, powerful, 1-D, coupled reaction-transport models are being used to simulate diagenesis processes in reservoir rocks.At the regional scale, the bridging of quantitative structural concepts with seismic interpretation has led to breakthroughs in structural analysis, particularly in complex terrains. Such analyses are becoming more accurate and cost effective when tied to highly advanced, remote-sensing, multi-spectral data acquisition and image processing technology. Emerging technology in petroleum geochemistry, enables geoscientists to infer the character, age, maturity, identity and location of source rocks from crude oil characteristics ('Geochemical Inversion') and to better estimate hydrocarbon-supply volumetrics. This can be invaluable in understanding petroleum systems and in reducing exploration risks and associated expenses.

Multiple Use and Nature Conservation in South Australia's Arid Zone.

1992 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 205 ◽  
Author(s):  
B Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Nature Conservation ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Arid Zone ◽  
Favourable Outcome ◽  
Petroleum Exploration ◽  
Multiple Use ◽  
Resource Exploitation ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Exploration And Production ◽  
Reserve System

Public interest in the arid zone has led to a huge expansion of South Australia's arid conservation reserve system since the early 1980s. As the arid reserve system expanded, there was accommodation of other land users under existing legislation. Other uses are tourism and recreation, exploration and mining, Aboriginal land uses and grazing. Expansion of the reserve system into the State's rangelands and into the oil and gas rich Cooper Basin led to the designation of a new reserve category, known as the Regional Reserve, which explicitly affords resource exploitation a place alongside conservation. The multiple use concept has allowed some key areas to be brought into South Australia's reserve system with relative ease. Innamincka was the first Regional Reserve and, to date, is the most complex of the multiple use reserves; tourism, petroleum exploration and production, and grazing take place in it. The multiple use concept assumes that more than one use can be managed in space and time without significant detriment to conservation values. It implies an acceptance of human-induced changes to natural systems, but does not resolve concerns about the acceptable limits to change. The question of who bears the cost of management and monitoring of multiple use reserves remains unresolved. There is an opportunity for conservation objectives to play a more central role in the management of arid lands which fall outside the reserve system. Careful, conservative management regimes in multiple use reserves will greatly increase the chances of a favourable outcome for nature conservation.

scholarly journals Understanding Landscape Influences on Aquatic Fauna across the Central and Southern Appalachians

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 16
Author(s):  
R. Daniel Hanks ◽  
Paul B. Leonard ◽  
Robert F. Baldwin
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Multiple Stressors ◽  
Abiotic Factors ◽  
Biological Data ◽  
Aquatic Macroinvertebrates ◽  
Boosted Regression Trees ◽  
Southern Appalachians ◽  
Aquatic Macroinvertebrate ◽  
Aquatic Fauna ◽  
Spatial Coverage

For the success of aquatic conservation efforts, it is imperative for there to be an understanding of the influences multiple stressors across the landscape have on aquatic biota, as it provides an understanding of spatial patterns and informs regional stakeholders. The central and southern Appalachians contain biodiversity hotspots for aquatic fauna. Therefore, we sought to create a comprehensive multimetric model that is based on the influence of abiotic factors on fish and aquatic macroinvertebrates that could predict watershed quality. Good spatial coverage exists for land use/land cover (LULC) and other physicochemical components throughout the region, yet biological data is unevenly distributed, which creates difficulties in making informed management and conservation decisions across large landscapes. We used boosted regression trees (BRT) to model a variety of biological responses (fish and aquatic macroinvertebrate variables) to abiotic predictors and by combining model outputs created a single score for both abiotic and biotic values throughout the region. The mean variance that was explained by BRT models for fish was 73% (range = 48–85%) and for aquatic macroinvertebrates was 81% (range = 76–89%). We categorized both predictor and response variables into themes and targets, respectively, to better understand large scale patterns on the landscape that influence biological condition of streams. The most important themes in our models were geomorphic condition for fish and water quality for aquatic macroinvertebrates. Regional models were developed for fish, but not for aquatic macroinvertebrates due to the low number of sample sites. There was strong correlation between regional and global watershed scores for fish models but not between fish and aquatic macroinvertebrate models. We propose that the use of such multimetric scores can inform managers, NGOs, and private land owners regarding land use practices, thereby contributing to large landscape scale conservation efforts.

Mintell4EU – Mineral Intelligence for Europe – a GeoERA project to improve and sustain the European raw materials knowledge base.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Whitehead ◽  
Lisbeth Flindt Jørgensen ◽  
Mikael Pedersen ◽  
Teresa Brown ◽  
Špela Kumelj ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Spatial Data ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Joint Research ◽  
Data Infrastructure ◽  
Horizon 2020 ◽  
Research And Innovation ◽  
Spatial Coverage ◽  
The United Nations

<p>There is a need for comprehensive, up-to-date, reliable and harmonised cross-border information on raw materials to improve resource efficiency across Europe. The Mintell4EU project builds on the achievements of previous projects such as Minerals4EU, ProSUM and Minventory to deliver data on the spatial distribution, production, trade, resource potential and levels of exploration activity to support decision making in government and industry.</p><p>The project has four principle components. The first component involves updating production, trade and exploration statistical data within the electronic European minerals yearbook. The second component includes extending the spatial coverage and improvement of spatial data quality within the Minerals4EU database. The third component will demonstrate how the application of the United Nations Framework Classification (UNFC) will provide a tool that can be used to more accurately assess European mineral inventories. The final component involves consolidating the electronic European minerals yearbook into the Minerals4EU database used for external systems such as the European Geological Data Infrastructure (EGDI) and the Joint Research Center’s Raw Materials Information System (RMIS). Another important goal of the project is to create a sustainable platform for raw materials.</p><p>The project works in collaboration with other GeoERA projects within the theme of raw materials such as FRAME and the GeoERA Information Platform Project (GIP-P). This collaboration is critical in ensuring data harmonisation across projects, regions and focus areas. Improvements in the quality and availability of data that are available through the web portal on the project home page https://geoera.eu/projects/mintell4eu7/ have already been achieved. Work will continue on improving the availability and relevance of raw material data throughout the remainder of the project. This will lead to improved foresight of the raw material supply situation and potential of Europe within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).</p><p>This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 731166</p>

scholarly journals Geospatial web services for limnological data: a case study of sensor observation service for ecological observations

2014 ◽  
Vol II-4 ◽  
pp. 9-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Arias Muñoz ◽  
A. Oggioni ◽  
M. A. Brovelli
Keyword(s):  
Web Services ◽  
Spatial Data ◽  
Drainage Basin ◽  
Biological Species ◽  
Biological Data ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Ecological Data ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
Geospatial Web Services

The present work aims at designing and implementing a spatial data infrastructure for storing and sharing ecological data through geospatial web services. As case study, we concentrated on limnological data coming from the drainage basin of Lake Maggiore in the Northern of Italy. In order to establish the infrastructure, we started with two basic questions: (1) What type of data is the ecological dataset? (2) Which are the geospatial web services standards most suitable to store and share ecological data? In this paper we describe the possibilities for sharing ecological data using geospatial web services and the difficulties that can be encountered in this task. In order to test actual technological solutions, we use real data of a limnological published study.We concluded that limnological data can be considered observational data, composed by biological (species) data and environmental data, and it can be modeled using Observation and Measurement (O&M) specification. With the actual web service implementation the geospatial web services that could potentially be used to publish limnological data are Sensor Observation Services (SOS) and Web Feature Services (WFS). SOS holds the essential components to represent time series observations, while WFS is a simple model that requires profiling. Both, SOS and WFS are not perfectly suitable to publish biological data, so other alternatives must be considered, as linked data.

scholarly journals A picture is worth a thousand words: using digital tools to visualize marine invertebrate diversity data along the coasts of Mozambique and São Tomé & Príncipe

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrique Niza ◽  
Marta Bento ◽  
Luis Lopes ◽  
Alexandra Cartaxana ◽  
Alexandra Correia
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Data ◽  
Marine Invertebrates ◽  
Marine Invertebrate ◽  
Biological Data ◽  
Marine Biodiversity ◽  
Web Mapping ◽  
Invertebrate Diversity ◽  
Invertebrate Biodiversity ◽  
Species Incidence ◽  
Access To Data

The amount of biological data available in online repositories is increasing at an exponential rate. However, data on marine invertebrate biodiversity resources are still sparse and scattered in these countries. Online repositories are useful instruments for biodiversity research, as they provide a fast access to data from different sources. The use of interactive platforms comprising web mapping are becoming more important not only for the scientific community, but also for conservation managers, decision-makers and the general public as they allow data presentation in simple and understandable visual schemes. The main goal of this study was to create an interactive online digital map (MARINBIODIV Atlas), through the collection of data from various sources, to visualize marine invertebrate occurrences and distribution across different habitats, namely mangroves, seagrasses, corals and other coastal areas, in Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe. The acquired biodiversity data were managed and structured to be displayed as spatial data and to be disseminated using the geographic information system ArcGIS, where data can be accessed, filtered and mapped. The ArcGIS web mapping design tools were used to produce interactive maps to visualize marine invertebrate diversity information along the coasts of Mozambique and São Tomé and Príncipe, through different habitats, offering the foundation for analysing species incidence and allocation information. Understanding the spatial occurrences and distribution of marine invertebrates in both countries can provide a valuable baseline, regarding information and trends on their coastal marine biodiversity.

scholarly journals Protecting nursery areas without fisheries management is not enough to conserve the most endangered parrotfish of the Atlantic Ocean

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalia C. Roos ◽  
Guilherme O. Longo ◽  
Maria Grazia Pennino ◽  
Ronaldo B. Francini-Filho ◽  
Adriana R. Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
Marine Protected Areas ◽  
Fish Population ◽  
Marine Conservation ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Multiple Use ◽  
Conservation Policies ◽  
Nursery Habitats ◽  
Population Maintenance ◽  
Effective Conservation ◽  
Shed Light

AbstractMarine protected areas (MPAs) are a primary strategy for marine conservation worldwide, having as a common goal the protection of essential habitats to enhance fish population recovery. However, MPAs alone may not be effective because species are not isolated from critical impacts occurring outside their boundaries. We evaluated how protecting critical nursery habitats affect the population of an important fishing target, using a 6-year database to predict juvenile hotspots and estimate population trends of the endemic and endangered parrotfish Scarus trispinosus within a mosaic of MPAs at the Abrolhos Bank, NE Brazil. We found that important nursery habitats are within no-take areas, but both juvenile and adult populations still show a declining trend over time. MPAs failed to ensure population maintenance and recovery likely due to overfishing in adjacent areas and the lack of compliance to management rules within multiple-use and within no-take MPAs. MPAs alone are not enough to protect ecologically important endangered species, but is still one of the only conservation strategies, particularly in developing countries. Our results shed light on the need for a wider adoption of more effective conservation policies in addition to MPAs, both in Brazil and in countries with similar governance contexts.

BUSINESS AND TAX ISSUES FOR PETROLEUM EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT COMPANIES INVESTING IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

1991 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 494
Author(s):  
Catherine A. Hayne
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Petroleum Exploration ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Oil And Gas Exploration ◽  
Corporate Executives ◽  
Exploration And Production

Oil and gas exploration and production opportunities in the United States represent possibilities for investment by Australian petroleum companies in the 1990s. This paper focuses on the unique characteristics of the oil and gas industry, and is intended as an entrepreneurial guide to some of the practical business and tax issues which corporate executives will confront when proposing to do business in the United States. It provides a detailed examination of the key issues, but, due to the complexity of United States and Australian laws, this paper should not be used as a substitute for detailed advice.

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