Oil & Gas Equipment & Services Data: Wells, Steel, Sensors and Barrels · Head-to-head
OGIM - Oil and Gas Infrastructure Mapping Database v2.5.1 vs NSTA National Data Repository (NDR)
Which oil & gas equipment & services data: wells, steel, sensors and barrels data fits your job: OGIM - Oil and Gas Infrastructure Mapping Database v2.5.1, or NSTA National Data Repository. API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
OGIM - Oil and Gas Infrastructure Mapping Database v2.5.1
NSTA National Data Repository (NDR)
Where the fields line up
No shared field names. These two answer different questions.
| Field | OGIM - Oil and Gas Infrastructure Mapping Database v2.5.1 | NSTA National Data Repository |
|---|---|---|
CATEGORY | Infrastructure category, one of 13 values: CRUDE OIL REFINERIES, EQUIPMENT AND COMPONENTS, INJECTION AND DISPOSAL, GATHERING AND PROCESSING, LNG FACILITIES, NATURAL GAS COMPRESSOR STATION, NATURAL GAS FLARING DETECTIONS, OFFSHORE PLATFORMS, OIL AND NATURAL GAS WELLS, OIL AND NATURAL GAS PIPELINES, PETROLEUM TERMINALS, STATIONS - OTHER, TANK BATTERIES. | not in this set |
OGIM_ID | Unique facility identifier assigned by OGIM; values do not repeat across infrastructure categories, so the ID space stays clean even when a location hosts more than one kind of asset. | not in this set |
SRC_DATE | Publication date of the source the record was acquired from, YYYY-MM-DD - the vintage stamp that lets you age-filter the map yourself instead of trusting a blanket freshness claim. | not in this set |
SRC_REF_ID | ID joining the record back to the Data Source Reference catalog, which names the agency or study behind every feature. | not in this set |
COUNTRY | Country of the record, matching the UN Member State list where possible; multi-country features carry a comma-separated alphabetical list. | not in this set |
STATE_PROV | State or province in which the facility resides. | not in this set |
FAC_ID | The original source agency's own facility identifier, preserved so you can trace any row back to its issuing registry. | not in this set |
FAC_NAME | Name of the facility as recorded by the original source. | not in this set |
FAC_STATUS | Operational status exactly as reported by the original source - values such as ACTIVE, SUSPENDED or TEMPORARILY CLOSED. An N/A means the source did not say, not that the facility is active or inactive. | not in this set |
FAC_TYPE | Detailed facility type straight from the original source - finer than the 13 top-level categories. | not in this set |
OGIM_STATUS | Standardized facility status, binned by EDF into one of 12 categories so mixed-vocabulary statuses become screenable in a single column. | not in this set |
OPERATOR | Facility operator name, deliberately unaltered from the original source at its publication date - messy spellings included, because cleaning is your call, not the map's. | not in this set |
Coverage, side by side
| OGIM - Oil and Gas Infrastructure Mapping Database v2.5.1 | NSTA National Data Repository | |
|---|---|---|
| Geographic | Global bounding box (-90,-180 to 90,180); roughly 300 Russian gas compressor stations withheld from the current release | UK Continental Shelf offshore, mapped to Quadrant, Block and Field polygons |
| Temporal | Consolidated from material published on or prior to April 2024; current snapshot dated May 2024 | Continuous statutory archive reaching back through decades of lodged material |
| Granularity | Point features per facility plus linear pipeline geometry, in WGS 1984 (EPSG:4326) | Project-level records down to individual File IDs with classification tags |
What each contains
Pick by fit, not by loyalty.
| OGIM - Oil and Gas Infrastructure Mapping Database v2.5.1 | NSTA National Data Repository | |
|---|---|---|
| Publisher | Environmental Defense Fund / MethaneSAT | UK North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) |
| Subject lens | One standardized schema for the world's oil and gas surface infrastructure: wells, pipelines, compressor stations, processing plants, tank batteries, platforms, LNG, refineries, terminals and flare detections | Statutory archive of UK offshore petroleum information: wells, seismic surveys, hazard surveys and related reports, organized under Project IDs |
| Geographic coverage | Global bounding box (-90,-180 to 90,180); roughly 300 Russian gas compressor stations withheld from the current release | UK Continental Shelf offshore, mapped to Quadrant, Block and Field polygons |
| Temporal depth | Consolidated from material published on or prior to April 2024; current snapshot dated May 2024 | Continuous statutory archive reaching back through decades of lodged material |
| Field dictionary | 12 documented fields, verified during research | 6 documented fields, verified during research |
| Record granularity | Point features per facility plus linear pipeline geometry, in WGS 1984 (EPSG:4326) | Project-level records down to individual File IDs with classification tags |
| Formats | GeoPackage tables with PDF schema and reference supplements | SEG-Y, LAS, DLIS, TIFF, CSV, PDF |
| Best for | Global infrastructure footprint: siting, exposure screening, cross-country counts, pipeline proximity | UK North Sea subsurface: well files, seismic volumes, survey reports and their completeness |
What each does better
OGIM
Planetary breadth, one schema. About 6.7 million features across 13 infrastructure categories - crude oil refineries, LNG facilities, natural gas compressor stations, offshore platforms, tank batteries, satellite flare detections, petroleum terminals, injection and disposal sites among them. Counting tank batteries in Texas against those in Alberta is a filter operation, because both arrive under identical column names.
Border-to-border comparability. Every feature lands in a single coordinate system, WGS 1984 (EPSG:4326), after consolidation from government, industry and academic geospatial sources. Cross-country infrastructure density needs no reconciliation layer - see facility-level records.
Hygiene that survives merging. Missing values are standardized ('N/A' for strings, -999 for numerics, 1900-01-01 for dates), facility status arrives both as reported and binned into 12 categories, and operator names are preserved unaltered beside each source agency's facility ID, so any row can be walked back to the catalog it came from.
Pipeline as geometry, not anecdote. More than 1.2 million kilometres of routed lines make proximity questions - which terminals sit along this corridor, which wells fall within a buffer of this route - answerable in spatial terms rather than name matching.
the NSTA National Data Repository
Depth below the surface. Where OGIM says a well exists, the NDR holds the well itself: SEG-Y seismic volumes, LAS and DLIS log files, TIFF summary and QC imagery, and the survey reports behind them. Footprint versus contents - only one side ships the measurements; see wellbore data and seismic survey data.
Absence as a data point. Every information type carries a completeness state - Available (file present), Unavailable (acquired but never lodged), Not Acquired (never acquired). That triad converts "is anything missing here?" from an archive dig into a queryable column, and it is an accounting almost no comparable collection maintains.
A systematic inventory grammar. The fixed Project ID pattern encodes company, year and project type, so an entire basin's holdings can be parsed programmatically without guessing conventions.
Statutory continuity. As the UK's official repository for offshore petroleum information - with carbon dioxide appraisal and storage records accruing over time - the archive reaches back through decades of lodged material rather than a compilation window.
Where they're equivalent
More than the field counts suggest. Both dictionaries were verified during research, both score clear of their slice average (9/10 and 8/10 against 7.07 across 14 primary records), and both put operator attribution and a location concept on every row.
Both also trace rows to an upstream origin: OGIM's SRC_REF_ID joins each feature to a documented source reference, while NDR project metadata carries survey IDs and contractor details. Neither asks you to trust an anonymous aggregate.
Their limits are symmetrical too. Neither carries commercial or financial series - no revenues, no benchmarks. Neither carries production volumes in these releases: OGIM retired its v1 production-volumes layer in v2.5.1, and the NDR catalogs lodged information rather than throughput. And neither behaves like a live sensor feed - OGIM is a compiled snapshot of published sources, the NDR an archive of what operators lodged, so real-time telemetry belongs to a different instrument entirely.
The verdict
Verdict: sample both, pick by fit - they answer different questions about the same molecules.
Take OGIM if your question begins with where. Methane-baseline siting, community exposure screening, cross-country infrastructure league tables, flaring detection density, terminal and refinery footprint mapping, pipeline proximity analysis - anything answered by standing over the whole board. Accept its frame: attributes per feature are deliberately few, and the picture is a snapshot of published sources, not a live wire.
Take the NDR if your question names the UK North Sea. Well files and log suites, seismic survey inventories, pre-study completeness audits, decommissioning research, carbon storage appraisal records - anything answered by opening the cabinet. Accept its frame: one jurisdiction, project-level organization, and file contents you evaluate rather than tabulate.
Sample both, pick by fit. See OGIM - Oil and Gas Infrastructure Mapping Database v2.5.1 · See NSTA National Data Repository
Or take both in one feed
Yes - they stack into one upstream picture that neither completes alone. Frame globally with OGIM: every basin ranked by feature counts, pipelines measured kilometre by kilometre, operators tallied by installed base, flare detections clustered. Then drop the UK column in from the NDR: beneath each UKCS footprint, the wells, seismic volumes and reports that actually exist, with their completeness stated rather than assumed.
Three alignments decide whether the merge holds. First, identity: OGIM_ID and FAC_ID never meet Project ID or File ID, so alignment runs through normalized operator names plus coordinate containment inside the UKCS envelope. Second, granularity: facility rows versus file-level items, so the unit of analysis must be declared before joining. Third, geometry: absolute points and lines versus Quadrant, Block and Field polygons, which need one reprojection pass before either side recognizes the other. We handle all three in the merge, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly - your call. Or take both in one feed.
API, files, or your warehouse. Daily, weekly, or hourly.
Fair questions
Is OGIM better than the NSTA National Data Repository (NDR)?
Better at different jobs. OGIM owns breadth: about 6.7 million features across 13 infrastructure categories, including 4.5 million well points and over 1.2 million kilometres of pipeline geometry, all in one schema and coordinate system. The NDR owns depth: the UK Continental Shelf's statutory archive of wells, seismic volumes and reports, complete with a three-state completeness ledger. On Datadory's rubric they score 9/10 and 8/10 in the same slice. Sample both, pick by fit.
Do OGIM and the NDR cover the same ground?
Only six concepts deep: row identity, spatial location, classification, record state, attribution and provenance. Beyond that they diverge by design. OGIM maps surface assets worldwide in a flat 12-field schema; the NDR files one basin's subsurface measurements project by project, down to individual File IDs. A footprint of a well and the log files inside it are related facts, not duplicate ones.
Which dataset documents more fields?
OGIM's, by six: 12 documented fields against the NDR's 6. OGIM spends them on breadth - category, dual status, operator, country and province, facility name and type, plus source citations. The NDR's six run deep instead: the Project ID grammar, File ID, Classification Tag, completeness status, project geometry and project metadata. Fewer columns, heavier rows.
Which should an infrastructure-mapping project sample first?
Start with OGIM to establish the frame: feature counts by country and category, pipeline routing, operator installed base, flare detection clusters. Add the NDR once the study area touches the UK Continental Shelf, where its completeness registry and file-level depth take over - confirming which wells and surveys actually exist before committing fieldwork or modeling time to them.
Can Datadory deliver both datasets together?
Yes - alone or merged onto one asset list, delivered daily, weekly, or hourly, your call. Each arrives normalized to its documented dictionary (12 OGIM fields, 6 NDR fields) with sample rows for inspection before anything ships. The joining work is name-and-coordinate alignment between incompatible identifier schemes plus one reprojection pass, which we handle in the merge. Or take both in one feed.