§16522 Low-volume Gas Reservoir Study

Summary

The Secretary must give a grant to an organization made up of oil and gas producing States that have many marginal wells. That group must work with each State’s geologist to carry out an annual study of low-volume natural gas reservoirs. The study must find where marginal wells and reservoirs are, collect their production data, estimate how much gas can still be produced under different pipeline pressures, find low-pressure gathering lines, suggest incentives to keep production going, make maps and materials to help conserve gas, and measure how much gas is wasted by venting or flaring with oil production. The data work must be done by a college or university with GIS skills, or the grantee must hire experts with advanced image processing, GPS, GIS database and software skills, and the ability to make maps and deliver data in multiple formats (including Internet Map Server and handheld devices). Funds authorized: $1,500,000 for fiscal year 2006 and $450,000 for each fiscal year 2007 through 2010. GIS means geographic information systems for managing location-based data.