Oil and gas reserves within the coastal margin have long been considered important sources of petroleum energy worldwide.  However, increasing interest in offshore oil production in the United States (U.S.) has generated conflicts over the sustainable management of coastal and marine resources.  In recent years, multiple interest groups have opposed industry efforts to lease submerged lands for drilling and extracting petroleum products, particularly those concerned with recreation, commercial fishing, biodiversity, and aesthetic value of the coast.  Public officials in Florida and California, for example, have resisted efforts to renew offshore oil drilling on the grounds that environmental, tourism, and aesthetics values will be negatively impacted.

While the suggestion of new oil rigs and related facilities in coastal waters has spawned intractable conflict over how coastal resources should be utilized, little research has been conducted on where these user conflicts may be most intense and which sites may be most suitable for locating oil production facilities in light of the multiple, and often times, competing values associated with the coastal zone.  Although there are numerous laws and permitting processes that regulate the coastal petroleum industry in the U.S., there exists scant literature on using multiple criteria to determine suitable sites for offshore oil and gas production, particularly from a spatial perspective.  Furthermore, there is no framework for systematically considering multiple criteria (i.e. multiple values and uses of stakeholders) when determining locations for oil and gas extraction infrastructure in coastal waters, particularly in Texas state-owned waters. 

Our study addresses this research gap by spatially evaluating multiple value-based criteria for establishing oil production facilities off the coast of Texas.  We combine methods for multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) and spatial decision support systems (SDSS) to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a site suitability measurement tool that identifies the least contentious locations for oil and gas production activities in the coastal margin of Texas.  Specifically, we: 1) use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to measure and map a range of potentially competing values impacted by establishing oil and gas extraction infrastructure for all leased tracts in Texas state waters; and 2) spatially and statistically analyze site suitability scores based on overlapping values to identify optimal locations for locating oil and gas extraction infrastructure in the Texas coastal margin.  Results provide insights on how policy makers and industry leaders can use spatial decision support systems to consider multiple user values (in addition to the location of petroleum reserves) when locating offshore oil and gas production facilities.

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Articles:

Brody, S.D., Himanshu Grover, Sara Bernhardt, Tommy Z., Bianca Whitaker, and Colin Spencer. (Under Review). A Multi-Criteria, Spatial Site Suitability Analysis for Oil and Gas Exploration in Texas State Coastal Waters. Environmental Management.