Automated Identification of Oil Field Features using CNNs

Oil and gas production sites have been identified as a major source of anthropogenic methane emissions. Emissions studies utilize counts of equipment to estimate emissions from production facilities. However these counts are poorly documented, including both information about well pad locations and major equipment on each well pad. While these data can be found by manually reviewing satellite imagery, it is prohibitively difficult and time consuming. This work, part of a larger study of methane emission studies in Colorado, US, adapted a machine learning (ML) algorithm to detect well pads and associated equipment. Our initial model showed an average well pad detection accuracy of 95% on the Denver-Julesburg (DJ) basin in northeastern Colorado. Our example demonstrates the potential for this type of automated detection from satellite imagery, leading to more accurate and complete models of production emissions.