case study
As regulators have sought more assurances from oil and gas producers regarding their methane and carbon emissions, PureWest Energy, the largest natural gas producer in Wyoming, is a pioneer in a new era of reporting transparency and accountability.
PureWest is a company devoted to minimizing its environmental impact and reducing its carbon footprint. It seeks to accomplish this by managing process emissions, implementing strong energy efficiency measures, conserving freshwater resources, and promoting biodiversity stewardship.
In 2022, the company enhanced the way it shares its environmental, social, and governance (ESG) reports by employing ArcGIS StoryMaps to more accurately highlight its progress. Through the digital storytelling tool powered by geographic information system (GIS) technology, users can combine maps, 3D scenes, embedded content, multimedia, and more into an interactive and engaging narrative.
Utilizing ArcGIS StoryMaps, PureWest transformed its 2021 corporate responsibility report into a compelling and interactive experience that showcases both emission reports and conservation efforts. This story presents readers with a full-picture narrative of PureWest's day-to-day operations.
By doing so, stakeholders—including investors, customers, and the public—have gained a deeper understanding of the company's commitment to environmental excellence and responsible business practices.
"Our industry and company are filled with people who care about creating sustainable solutions, but telling that story can be difficult," explained Kelly Bott, PureWest's senior vice president of corporate affairs. "[ArcGIS StoryMaps] allowed us to enhance our reporting metrics to ensure our customers and stakeholders have access to the most accurate and up-to-date information to better understand our unique challenges and solutions. This first-of-its-kind digital ESG report gave us a unique platform to tell our story."
A PureWest well pad is situated in the town of Pinedale, Wyoming.
Each year, the energy company publishes a corporate responsibility report in a traditional PDF format featuring eye-catching visuals, graphics, and narratives to highlight its use of sensors, sampling, and diverse data to achieve sustainability goals.
In keeping with PureWest's commitment to environmental sustainability, the pictured production pad utilizes solar panels to generate electricity and power its equipment, resulting in reduced emissions.
After reading the report, Bobby Saleh, the energy company's GIS manager, saw an opportunity to enhance it with cutting-edge technology and underscore the company's commitment to transparency, data, and innovation.
"I was flipping through the pages, and there was a lot of information about the location of sensors or samples," said Saleh, but no maps visually showing them. He felt that a story created with ArcGIS StoryMaps would best convey PureWest's operation and bring the information to life.
PureWest is a company committed to spearheading the industry through positive and lasting environmental and community initiatives, and Saleh and Bott wanted the story to accurately portray the company's responsible and reliable natural gas production for its stakeholders and potential customers. This meant including contextual information like case studies, images, maps, and explanations of how collected data affected operational processes and environmental stewardship.
This portion of the story highlights PureWest's efforts around groundwater monitoring in Wyoming, USA, and offers an interactive map of the monitoring locations across the field.
Bott knows the traditional text-heavy report still has its place with certain audiences, but the digital story engages a wider audience to learn about PureWest's operations. "We're still reporting results, but we can now show how everything actually works and what this means for our stakeholders."
With a clear objective, the next step was to build the story itself. Although Saleh had experience creating smaller stories with ArcGIS StoryMaps, the scale and impact PureWest envisioned required some additional assistance. The energy company worked with Esri partner GeoMarvel and business consulting firm FTI Consulting to create a framework and working template. Saleh and his team—a GIS intern, an environmental engineer, and an environmental lead—collaborated to review details including icons, data sources, and approvals. Later, Saleh created the map visuals, services, images, and web maps for embedding.
PureWest has been a longtime user of ArcGIS Enterprise for mapping, data storage, and analysis. As a result, Saleh had a strong foundation on which to integrate the needed data into the story. He then used ArcGIS Online, a cloud platform for creating web maps, to republish the data for the external-facing story. Lastly, additional data needed for the story —including high-resolution drone and satellite imagery, remotely sensed data, and government agency data—was identified, collected, and mapped in the GIS.
This story section showcases PureWest's endeavors toward reducing emissions, featuring a slider bar to view the implemented measures for reducing overall emissions across the field. The map displays the specific locations of PureWest's solar heat trace pumps and solar methanol pumps installed in 2022, along with planned future installations.
To achieve its transparency goals with the story, PureWest included contextual examples that demonstrated its unique position in the differentiated natural gas market and its commitment to protecting the environment. For example:
This screenshot from the report highlights PureWest's initiative to conduct detailed noise studies for a proposed drilling operation that measure how sound propagates across the topography to minimize any potential disturbance to the sage-grouse mating activities.
To uphold its transparency strategy, PureWest showcased both achievements and improvement plans throughout its report. For instance, in 2022, PureWest reduced the average leak repair time to seven days and increased on-site renewable power generation from 810 kW to 840 kW. But notably, in the air quality and emissions section, the company also openly addressed a slight increase in emissions in 2022 compared to 2021. Bott believes that transparency is a crucial element in the company's environmental stewardship strategy.
"If we are going to be transparent, that means having integrity. It's got to be accurate and real, which means sharing the full picture," Bott said. "I think we have done a good job of communicating those areas in which we seek to improve." Looking ahead, Bott adds that PureWest plans to use GIS technologies to collect data on where its emissions originate. As assets evolve, this will help the company better identify solutions for reducing emissions, which PureWest plans to share in the story.
"At PureWest, we believe in transparency and data to communicate the intentional progress toward our ESG objectives, which is why we're proud to launch a first-of-its-kind digital tool to give users an unprecedented look into our industry-leading operations," said Chris Valdez, CEO at PureWest.
In this section of the report, PureWest showcases its efforts in emissions monitoring. The company has deployed an extensive network of monitoring locations on this drilling pad, as seen in the high-resolution drone image in the map. This technology enables PureWest to continuously monitor its facilities' methane emissions.
PureWest's story earned a Special Achievement in GIS Award from Esri at the 2023 annual Esri User Conference. Saleh has since presented his team’s work at various events, including the 2023 annual Energy Resources Conference.
"It's critically important—not only for our company but also for our industry—to share these stories with consumers in a concise and engaging manner," Bott said.
With the story serving as the primary means of showcasing PureWest's efforts, Bott explained the technology changed how the company decides what work, images, and data would be beneficial to share with readers.
According to Bott, the story has not only made the company's employees enthusiastic advocates but has also motivated them to propose novel applications of GIS and readily share their work with family and friends.
PureWest is committed to protecting wildlife and their habitats. Pictured here is undisturbed pronghorn near some of PureWest's well pad equipment.
The story's success also led to broader GIS adoption across PureWest's departments, such as employing ArcGIS Field Maps to gather field information and increase safety awareness. PureWest is now looking to take location analytics to the next level by incorporating ArcGIS Velocity for field efficiency analysis, as well as for safety monitoring and planning.
"I think people who have viewed the map are experiencing these 'aha' moments where they see how GIS can help with specific challenges, such as gathering and sharing field data, communicating worker locations, and assisting with overall spatial awareness. So, the story has helped influence some of the decisions made in the company," said Saleh.
The latest iteration of the story will include some of the company's larger initiatives, including its work with a reclamation specialist and its creation of an interactive dashboard. PureWest also purchased a 360-degree camera for capturing imagery of its well pads and walk-throughs. The map will feature images of some of those pad views so the public can see the wide range of technology being used to develop PureWest's clean natural gas.
"At PureWest, we believe in transparency and data to communicate the intentional progress toward our ESG objectives, which is why we're proud to launch a first-of-its-kind digital tool to give users an unprecedented look into our industry-leading operations."
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