Modeling the cumulative onshore effects of offshore oil and gas development

Modelling Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas developments and effects involves the use of a variety of planning and analysis techniques. This paper concerns onshore aspects of the OCS oil and gas development process; however, planning for onshore activities requires an understanding of the scale, magnitude, and timing of offshore activities that trigger onshore actions. A number of factors usually influence the numbers and kinds of onshore facilities that eventually locate in an area, given marketable discoveries of oil and gas. Generally, these include the discovered recoverable reserves of oil and gas in an offshore basin, the number and size of oil and gas fields discovered over time, production platform requirements, timing of field development and production operations, and the location and means of product transportation and processing. The sequence of events that occurs during the oil and gas leasing, exploration, development, and production process is the subject of this study. Following the introduction, the following topics are discussed: modelling requirements; magnitude and timing of offshore activity; onshore facilities and their impacts; regional analysis; state analysis; cumulative effects.