Mapping the North Dakota Oil Boom
February 20, 2013 § Leave a Comment
The state of North Dakota maintains one of the best, free GIS datasets in the nation. Not only is it available to surf, but most of the datasets can be downloaded and played with in the GIS program of your choice.
I recently downloaded the almsot exhaustive dataset of oil wells in the state and played with it in ArcGIS as I prepared an informal presentation on our recent research in the North Dakota Oil Patch. The resulting map is below.
The green dots represent wells from the most recent boom nad the various other color dots represent earlier booms. The black specs are wells that are still active. I was particularly interested in wells dating to before the first 1950 oil boom including some in the Red River Valley from the late 1940s. It might be useful to look for some of the earlier well sites just to get a sense for how these places might appear in the landscape.
Since I’m currently cruising at 30,000+ feet, it’s probably best to keep this short, but I’ll mess a bit more with these maps over the next few weeks.
