Study on spatial variation of land subsidence over Minagish–Umm Gudair oil fields of Kuwait using synthetic aperture radar interferometry technique

Abstract

Land subsidence can be a major problem where there are large-scale underground activities such as oil extraction. This paper addresses the spatial variability of land subsidence over Minagish and Umm Gudair oil fields of Kuwait. Synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) with multiple reference scenes using a persistent scatterer InSAR toolchain was employed in this study. Twenty-nine scenes of advanced synthetic aperture radar data (for the period January 2005 to August 2009) were used to make 20 pairs of interferograms (with high coherence and low noise) of stable point-like reflectors. The output of this study is the land subsidence maps of Minagish and Umm Gudair oil fields with a spatial resolution of 40 m. The results indicate that there is land subsidence of 29.9 mm/year in the southern part of the oil field (Umm Gudair). This is the first detailed assessment of land subsidence in the Minagish–Umm Gudair oil fields; therefore, no ground-truth data are available to compare the subsidence results. The results were consistent, indicating their validity.