Identifying, Correcting, and Allocating Geodetic Systems to Georeferenced Data in Hydrocarbon Exploration by Using High-Resolution Satellite Imagery

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Hydrocarbon exploration in Argentina started long before the IGM created a single, high-precision geodetic reference network for the whole country. For that reason, several geodetic surveys were conducted in every producing basin, which have ever since then supported land surveys, well placement, seismic programs, etc. Currently, every basin has a huge amount of information referenced to the so-called "local" geodetic systems, such as Aguaray in the Northwestern Basin, 25 de Mayo in the Cuyo Basin, Quiñi-Huao in the Neuquén Basin, Pampa del Castillo in the San Jorge Basin, and Tapi Aike in the Austral Basin, which differ to a greater or lesser extent from the national Campo Inchauspe datum established by the IGM in 1969 as the official geodetic network. However, technology development over the last few years and the expansion of satellite positioning systems such as GPS resulted in a new world geodetic order. Argentina rapidly joined this new geodetic order through the implementation of a new national geodetic system by the IGM, i.e. the so-called POSGAR network (Fig. 1), which replaced the old national Campo Inchauspe system. However, this only helped to worsen the data georeferencing issue for oil companies, as a third reference system was added to each basin. Now every basin has a local system, the national system in force until 1997 (Campo Inchauspe), and finally the newly created POSGAR network national satellite system, which is geocentric unlike the former two planimetric datums.