California Oilfield Underground Aquifer Injection Monitoring by Blockchain Technology

Abstract

Water contamination is a primary concern in a region where water and petroleum play such vital roles in the economy, and where both industry and regulatory agencies pay close attention to environmental quality. In this research, we built a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) based prototype using R3 Corda. Its purpose applies in the oil & gas underground injection control (UIC) operations for the underground aquifer protection. This DLT prototype is a permissioned network which allows oil & gas companies to create, disseminate and trace immutable records. This network allows oil & gas companies, state agencies, and all other participants to share secure records such as well information while maintaining data integrity, traceability, and security. With the underlying cryptographic technologies of DLT, any unauthorized changes to the information, ownership or its history will become infeasible.