# OGNet: Towards a Global Oil and Gas Infrastructure Database using Deep Learning on Remotely Sensed Imagery

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07227 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.07227/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 14 Nov 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [GEO-Bench: Toward Foundation Models for Earth Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03831/) (2023)
- [Toward Foundation Models for Earth Monitoring: Proposal for a Climate Change Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00570/) (2021)
- [METER-ML: A Multi-Sensor Earth Observation Benchmark for Automated Methane Source Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.11166/) (2022)
- [Automated Extraction of Energy Systems Information from Remotely Sensed Data: A Review and Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12939/) (2022)
- [Power Plant Classification from Remote Imaging with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.10894/) (2021)
- [OGInfra: Geolocating Oil & Gas Infrastructure using Remote Sensing based Active Fire Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.16924/) (2022)
- [Extracting Built Environment Features for Planning Research with Computer Vision: A Review and Discussion of State-of-the-Art Approaches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12693/) (2022)
- [Alberta Wells Dataset: Pinpointing Oil and Gas Wells from Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.09032/) (2024)
- [Environment-Aware Satellite Image Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24875/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

At least a quarter of the warming that the Earth is experiencing today is due to anthropogenic methane emissions. There are multiple satellites in orbit and planned for launch in the next few years which can detect and quantify these emissions; however, to attribute methane emissions to their sources on the ground, a comprehensive database of the locations and characteristics of emission sources worldwide is essential. In this work, we develop deep learning algorithms that leverage freely available high-resolution aerial imagery to automatically detect oil and gas infrastructure, one of the largest contributors to global methane emissions. We use the best algorithm, which we call OGNet, together with expert review to identify the locations of oil refineries and petroleum terminals in the U.S. We show that OGNet detects many facilities which are not present in four standard public datasets of oil and gas infrastructure. All detected facilities are associated with characteristics known to contribute to methane emissions, including the infrastructure type and the number of storage tanks. The data curated and produced in this study is freely available at http://stanfordmlgroup.github.io/projects/ognet .