Historical Oil and Gas Infrastructure in the Middle East and North Africa

Shapefiles provide geospatial data on oil and gas infrastructure across the Middle East and North Africa. The dataset includes locations of oil fields, natural gas-producing areas, exploration and production wells, pipelines, and refineries. One source suggests a historical reference year of 1963, indicating the data may capture a specific historical snapshot.

Use Cases

• Mapping the historical footprint of the oil and gas industry based on shapefile boundaries.
• Analyzing the spatial relationship between production areas and transport networks using pipeline and well location data.
• Studying regional energy infrastructure development and concentration using refinery and field locations.

Strengths

• Cross-platform presence on Dataverse suggests established use and importance for research.
• Provides specific, mappable features like pipelines, wells, and field boundaries.

Limitations

• Critical metadata is missing: no row counts, file sizes, column names, or specific license information are provided.
• The temporal coverage is ambiguous; one source mentions '1963' while the title suggests '1941', creating a conflict.
• Data freshness is unclear; last update dates are administrative, not indicative of the underlying data's currency.

Provenance

Source

Author: Nejjar, Sawsene. Organization: Historic shapefiles.

Time Range

1941 (from title), with a conflicting reference to 1963 in one tag.

Freshness

Last updated on Dataverse as 2025-10-14 (administrative metadata).

Geography

Middle East and North Africa.