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ABSTRACT
Oil and gas field boundaries for twelve onshore US study areas were created by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) using the Geographic Information System (GIS) software ArcGIS 8.3 as part of the EIA's role in implementing provisions of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA). The resultant field boundaries were then intersected with Federal land coverages to determine the portion of each field located on Federal land, leading to estimation of the proved oil and gas reserves located on Federal lands of the study areas. Owing to inconsistencies regarding the type, vintage, and coverage of existing public source boundaries the EIA had to construct new field boundaries. These were created by (1) buffering the field's wells at a radius based on the observed inter-well spacing, (2) unioning the well buffers to make one polygon outline per field, and (3) applying a novel algorithm to acceptably smooth the boundaries while ensuring that the increase in total outlined area remained minimal.