Qatar Petroleum (QP) recently won the Geospatial World Excellence Award 2012 in recognition of its implementation of a geographic information system (GIS) project at the QP Refinery in Mesaieed Industrial City. The corporation was honoured under the category “Application of Geospatial Technology in Oil & Gas Production.”
Mr. Ali Ahmed Al-Mohannadi, QP’s Technical Services Manager, received the award at a formal ceremony organized as part of the Geospatial World Forum 2012, which was held recently in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The theme of the event was “Geospatial Technology and World Economy,” and it attracted the participation of a large number of delegates from all over the world.
The Geospatial World Excellence Awards primarily aim to recognize exemplary innovation and practices in the use of geospatial technologies worldwide. This year’s winners were chosen after inviting nominations from across the globe, and all the entries were then evaluated and judged by an international panel of experts.
QP bagged the award for developing GIS-based spatial networks for utility and process systems at the QP Refinery. The GIS data collection project, which is the first of its kind in an oil and gas plant, involved a user-needs study, data mining of numerous as-built engineering records, development of data models, topographic surveys, buried services mapping, and geodatabase and network design, which was then populated with data.
The intelligent spatial networks enable querying, locating and tracing of every piping/cable and associated system components outside the process units - right at the user’s desktop. The system provides an integrated view of various systems over the backdrop of topographic base maps, aerial and/or satellite images and connects with QP’s onshore pipeline and cable networks as well as those of other government organizations on Qatar GISNet, such as Kahramaa and Ashghal.
QP was the only winner in the use of geospatial technology in oil & gas production. The other awardees in other categories came from many countries worldwide, including Sweden, Japan, the US, Malaysia, India, and the UK.
