A smarter, faster way to explore, evaluate and execute new energy…

When interacting with the world around us on a daily basis, it feels like most features are mapped: our city centers and the surrounding communities, the recreation areas near cities and even some of the well-known and explored far-flung areas. But remote parts of the globe still hold mysteries to be explored and mapped.

Oil and gas companies are regular explorers of these hard-to-reach areas, searching for new ventures—or locations to fuel their operations. The process of finding, evaluating and setting up new locations is often a significant investment for energy companies. Maxar’s satellite imagery, analytics and services can help these companies expedite the expansion of their prospecting operations.

Exploring new ventures

Energy companies may consider many different sites at once when looking for new zones of operation. They will remotely plan where to go, how to get there and do an initial assessment of a site’s viability. Maxar’s geospatial insights can inform each part of this process:

Oil and gas companies can leverage Maxar Geospatial Platform (MGP) Pro to task and examine fresh, very high-resolution satellite imagery from the Maxar constellation over the sites under consideration. Maxar’s Precision3D product can also be streamed via MGP Pro for terrain analysis and mapping in the exploration phase. These data layers enable geomatics and analytics teams at these companies to conduct right-of-way assessments, determine what infrastructure exists around the sites and what needs to be constructed, and optimize seismic surveys. This MGP Pro screenshot shows a drilling area between Midland and Odessa, Texas, as imaged on November 4, 2023, by Maxar’s WorldView-3 satellite.

Maxar’s WorldView-3 satellite collects images in the shortwave infrared (SWIR) spectrum, which are not visible to the human eye. These light bands can be displayed in ways that allow a user to understand unique attributes about a location, such as what minerals are present on the face of the Earth (often called indicator minerals as they can provide clues to what’s under the surface) or see where methane is leaking. This information can further validate a possible drilling site’s viability before crews visit in person. This is the same image as the previous image, but the SWIR bands are made visible, allowing the user to clearly distinguish between the scraped dirt of existing drill pads and roads against the untouched, natural vegetation in the area.

Maxar’s Human Landscape product provides insights into international geographic areas that will help on-site crews be better prepared for their arrival in the area: What type of facilities and roads are in the area? What languages are spoken? What are the local demographics and geopolitics? Having this information ahead of time allows the crew to avoid possible missteps with the local community. This screenshot shows the Human Landscape dataset generated in November 2024 over the Ras Lanuf Refinery in Libya.

Evaluating a site for selection

Once initial assessments and exploration are done at a new ventures site, an energy company needs to determine what actions need to happen to turn the selected site into an operational site and if those actions fit within their budget and strategic plans. This involves considering factors such as possible locations for well pads, pipelines and refining facilities, offices and roads, and if that infrastructure already exists or needs to be constructed. Maxar’s geospatial insights can help inform these decisions:

Maxar’s Building & Road Change product calls out what changes have occurred at a specific area between two timeframes. This information can help an oil and gas company quickly understand how an area of interest’s development has been shifting over time and determine if it’s energy-related change, such as from competitors, or residential or commercial development. By tasking new imagery of the areas of identified change, companies can get a current view of what’s happening at the site and establish a continuous monitoring program to understand how the site changes as the seasons change. In this example, the image location from the previous gallery is noted with a blue map pin and the orange vectors call out changes near that site from 2024 to 2025, focusing a customer’s attention on the newly developed neighborhood (bottom left) and structural changes along the main road (upper right).

Built from our industry-leading satellite imagery, Maxar’s Precision3D provides an immersive 3D look at the Earth that can help an oil and gas company with construction- and risk-related assessments. A company can leverage Precision3D to understand the terrain it’ll need to traverse to reach a remote site and create reliable construction estimates if they need to build roads. Once on-site, it’s likely that some areas will need to be leveled out, which can be an expensive task. Precision3D’s Digital Elevation Models can help an oil and gas company determine the volume of dirt that will need to be moved in or out to create level sites for well pads, enabling them to compare potential costs of these activities between different sites to inform their site selection. Site planners can also leverage Precision3D’s Digital Terrain Model, like the screenshot above, for flood risk modeling to answer questions such as: If a spill happened at this site, where would the oil run and gather? If the site floods or they hit a water table during drilling, where can they store that water safely? This rendering of the Precision3D Digital Terrain Model with hillshade symbology shows elevation changes across the bare ground, allowing site planners to understand potential collection sites. The map pin highlights the area of the image from the previous gallery.

Maxar’s Spatial on Demand product enables energy companies to combine Maxar’s satellite imagery with proprietary data—such as drone data or ancillary project data like local permit leasing boundaries—to create a common operating picture that can be shared with all employees, including surveyors, geologists, geophysicists, engineers, landmen and security teams. This April 22, 2025, image from Maxar’s WorldView-2 satellite of the drilling area in the Permian Basin reveals that a new drilling site has been constructed. These data layers can be viewed through Maxar’s software or streamed in your enterprise’s preferred GIS application, like Esri’s ArcGIS shown above.

Enacting extraction planning and construction activities

After a thorough evaluation of possible new ventures sites, an energy company will select which site(s) to develop and finalize construction plans and obtain permits. Maxar’s site monitoring solution, which combines automated tasking and advanced analytics, can be leveraged as crews arrive on site and start construction to monitor materials arriving and keep an eye on environmental impacts.

The area that we’ve been examining between Midland and Odessa, Texas, had a new drilling site constructed between October 2024 and April 2025. This video shows the progression of this well pad’s construction through the six images collected by the Maxar constellation. This video uses the Compare Tool in MGP Pro.

Maxar’s site monitoring solution runs a car detection model on the new drilling site’s location; on the left, the car detections are shown as blue boxes in the WorldView Legion image from April 3, 2025, produced at 15 cm HD resolution. When the detection model is run on the six images collected as the site was being built, the detections demonstrate the increase in traffic during construction and the start of operations. When this monitoring technique is applied across a wide operational area, it allows an energy customer to quickly detect traffic trends and spot any unusual or unexpected activity.

Empower decision-making with Maxar’s geospatial insights

As energy companies explore and map remote parts of the globe, Maxar’s industry-leading satellite imagery, analytics and services can help them save time and resources as they navigate through each stage of the exploration, evaluation and construction process for setting up new ventures.

Expediate the expansion of your oil and gas operations

Maxar’s geospatial insights can save time and resources when discovering, evaluating and setting up new sites.

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