MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 08, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Orbital Insight, a US-based geospatial analytics company, today announced the general availability of Orbital Insight Energy, with rolling country releases to complete the world’s top 25 oil markets, including all OPEC members, by the end of December 2017. The product tracks the amount of oil being stored in floating roof tanks in a given country, providing insight and unprecedented transparency into that nation’s overall oil storage. This expansion of the product increases its global coverage, which previously included the U.S., China and Europe.
Using a proprietary combination of artificial intelligence and computer vision, Orbital Insight has developed a highly accurate method to estimate a country’s oil storage by measuring shadows cast by individual oil tanks. The company analyzes satellite imagery to find all the floating roof oil storage tanks located in a particular country, and then uses algorithms to calculate the fluctuations in the volume of oil in those tanks.
This expanded product coverage has already yielded meaningful insights, including finding 624 total floating roof storage tanks in Saudi Arabia alone, nearly double the 318 reported by industry database TankTerminals.com. The official source for oil data in OPEC is the Joint Organisations Data Initiative (JODI), which provides data for oil stocks stored in Saudi Arabia, comprised of floating roof tanks and other storage modalities. From 2013 to 2015, there was a positive directional trend between JODI data for total Saudi oil storage and Orbital Insight’s analysis of floating roof tank storage amounts. This positive directional trend suggests that estimated storage for floating roof tanks is an actionable proxy for tracking overall changes in total oil stocks, and is the indicator oil industry experts trust for U.S. and Europe oil data.
However, Orbital Insight noticed an abrupt change in Q1 2016. While JODI has shown overall Saudi storage as decreasing steadily since then, by about 70 million barrels, Orbital Insight’s numbers do not reflect those storage cuts. Instead, Orbital Insight has seen floating roof tank storage slightly increase by 2 million barrels over the same time period.
"The initial results we've seen from Orbital Insight Energy across key oil-producing countries are exceptionally robust," said Dr. James Crawford, founder and CEO of Orbital Insight. "Our technology provides customers data that's grounded in observable truth for a notoriously difficult-to-track commodity."
Orbital Insight Energy is available today as a subscription service through a web-based user interface or by RESTful API.
About Orbital Insight
Orbital Insight develops geospatial analytics to help its clients unlock societal and economic trends at a global scale. The company sources petabytes of satellite, drone, balloon and other unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) data. Using computer vision and machine learning technologies, it processes and interprets this data to create insights and intelligence enabling businesses, governments and NGOs to make better decisions. Learn why Fast Company voted Orbital Insight one of the most innovative companies of 2017 at www.orbitalinsight.com.