Dissemination and Decision Support
The University of Arkansas and Argonne National Laboratory, sponsored by the DOE through the Low Impact Natural Gas and Oil (LINGO) Program, developed the Fayetteville Shale Information Website, and the University of Arkansas developed the Fayetteville Shale Infrastructure Placement Decision Support System. The information website describes the natural gas resources available in the Fayetteville Shale formation in Arkansas, describes their development and provides information about the state and federal regulatory requirements that developers must follow. The site also describes some of the technologies that can be used to minimize the environmental impacts of natural gas development and provides current interactive maps showing the locations of active drill sites and permitted sites.
The decision support system is also an online map-based resource but is targeted at producers, regulators and other primary stake holders. The system provides several decision support tools to (1) help reduce the possibility of negative environmental impact from infrastructure (drill pads, gather lines, reserve pits and access roads) placement and, (2) promote more effective communication between regulators and producers to expedite the permitting process.
The system provides unique capabilities including (1) a geographic information system shared by producers and regulators to place infrastructure features interactively and let advanced sediment transport models predict the effect on nearby regulated waterways and a (2) wildlife habitat layer used to better predict the possibility of interaction with threatened or endangered species. The system also supports more common queries such as proximity to existing critical infrastructure, potential water crossings, and soil suitability. The web-enabled decision support tool and the supporting queries are constructed in ArcGIS Server 9.3.
The first task is to collect and provide information in the same manner as the Fayetteville Shale program and provie a framework into which field, specific information (natural resources, regulations, drilling activities, etc.) could be placed. This will enable local stakeholders to more quickly and efficiently “stand-up” up an equivalent informational site. The deliverable for this task will include working with stakeholders from at least one other play to deploy an information site using this framework and document the process so that it could more easily be deployed elsewhere.
The Decision Support System developed for the Fayetteville Shale does not take into account the positional and attribution uncertainties associated with the GIS data layers. The decision support system will be modified to use innovative methods to organize, evaluate and structure the spatial data so that the spatial and attribution uncertainty of the various data (e.g., SSURGO soils from NRCS, streams from USGS, roads from various sources, buildings from county assessors, etc.) is used to provide a more realistic assessment of the risk of a particular infrastructure placement in an approach consistent with recent National Academy of Science recommendations.
There are five key deliverables associated with this work scope:
An informational web site for the Haynesville Shale.
A white paper (8 to 12 pages) that summarizes the needs and barriers for the region.
A white paper (8 to 12 pages) that summarizes the needs and barriers for the region including a discussion of the application of EFD technologies to the region.
A series of workshops (at least two) that will transfer EFD technologies to regional stakeholders.
A paper and presentation at a conference.