Drill, Baby, Drill: Spatial Analysis of California’s Oil and Gas Wells

Milestone 5: Final Report, Spatial Database Design, Temple University
by Stephen Baron, 27 April 2022

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRAky_r9EUtC15wlCLKFvtx6-L32f3Rt1L1vE9CbtY3M4yaVW4gUP4uDxS-Aesxfz2hNuDsIumEiUH0/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

1. Dataset

This dataset is “Oil and Gas Wells Table, California” (https://gis.conservation.ca.gov/portal/home/item.html?id=0d30c4d9ac8f4f84a53a145e7d68eb6b), with 241,017 rows of data about individual wells across the state.

The data is in the coordinate reference system WGS 1984 (4326) (contrary to the data dictionary, by uploading the data to QGIS, it reveals the data is in 4326, not 3857 WGS84 Pseudo-Mercator). During the project, the data will be transformed into 3310 California Alberts NAD1983 in feet.

This dataset is is produced by the Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM), formerly the Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR); much of the data still references DOGGR. CalGEM oversees the drilling, operation, maintenance, and plugging and abandonment of oil, natural gas, and geothermal energy wells. CalGEM’s authority extends from onshore to three miles offshore. [1]

California’s oil production began in the late 1800s. CalGEM was formed in 1915 to ensure the safe development and recovery of energy resources. CalGEM’s authority extends from onshore to three miles offshore. [1]

While California is a top-10 oil-producing state, the state has also seen production decline since the 1980s. Furthermore, CalGEM is driving California’s goals to become carbon-neutral by 2045, seemingly at odds with continuing oil and gas exploration and pumping. [1]

California approved more new wells in March and April 2022 than in any two-month period since October 2021. News reports cited increased demand for oil and gas due to due to the Ukraine war, and the federal government opening more  public land to energy drilling. [2]

This dataset can be used for many analyses, such as identifying different types of wells, their status, location, and when they were drilled. Among the uses are one could identify where new wells should be drilled, or where old wells should be plugged or re-activated, or also do an analysis of well ownership.

This dataset is ideally used in conjunction with other datasets, such as US Census data. For example, though it’s beyond the scope of this assignment, one could analyze the wells in relation to high-risk communities of color or high poverty. One recent study shows that historically redlined neighborhoods are burdened by excess oil and gas wells, leading to pollution and public health issues. [3]

This research report will analyze 3 questions:

1) Which are the well ids, owners, status, locations, and distance in miles of the 5 nearest wells to the intersection of Hollywood and Vine?
Question #1 shows the extent to which oil and gas wells permeate even the most touristic intersections in California. Question #1 also includes using the PostGIS TIGER (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system) Geocoder, which turns the intersection into geographic coordinates. TIGER Geocoding involves downloading US Census road datasets of the US and California.

2) Find the distance in miles from the wells in the northernmost county of  Siskiyou, to the nearest well in the southernmost county of San Diego.

Question #2 shows the state-wide extent of wells, and could support further oil and gas pipelines.

3) In light of rising demand for natural gas, which 10 new or active dry gas wells are closest to Los Angeles county? Do not include wells in Los Angeles county. List the well id, operator name, well status, well type, and county name.

Question #3 shows the potential for optimizing natural gas wells near Los Angeles to meet rising energy demand, and also outside of Los Angeles county’s boundaries.

2. Structure of the Data and Normalization

In creating the tables, one creates the lookup tables first, as the info table then references them.

Table #1: status – This has two fields: well_status, a one-word primary key, and status_descr, which describes the status of the well. The Data Dictionary

well_status: There are 8 values in caallwells: Active, Buried, Canceled, Idle, New, Plugged, PluggedOnly, and Unknown. Three values (Buried, Canceled, and PluggedOnly) are not in the Data Dictionary, but are added based on caallwells.

status_descr: Based on the Data Dictionary descriptions.

Table #2: well_type – This is a two-letter code that indicates the well type. While the Data Dictionary lists only 14 well types, there are actually 19 values in the caallwells data set, below. There are only two fields: well_type, the primary key and the two-letter code, and the type_descr, the description.

(The Data Dictionary has only 14: AI, DG, DH, GD, GS, LG, OB, OG, PM, SC, SF, WD, WF, WS.)

Table #3: base_meridian – This is a short lookup table, which defines the base principle meridian for the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) and is required for all California surveys. There are only two fields: the meridian, the one-or-two letter primary key, and meridian_descr, which describes the meridian.

Table #4: gis_source – This is a short lookup table, which has a 3-letter code, gis_source, the primary key that describes the method by which the well location was established. There are only two fields: gis_source, the 3-letter code, and the gis_descr, which provides the description. There are 8 values.

There’s a discrepancy between the Data Dictionary and the caallwells data: The caallwells uses GPS, hud, mip, Notice of Intent to Drill, Operator, Unknown, and Well Summary, which are then standardized into 3-letter codes in gis_source, and also adds in DOQ – Digital Ortho Quad, which is in the Data Dictionary but not in the caallwells; DOQ may be used elsewhere in California state datasets.

Table #5: ownership – This short lookuptabledescribes the ownership of the wells. There are only two fields: opco (operatorco in caallwells, opcode in the Data Dictionary), a 5-digit unique identifier of letters and numbers that also serves as the primary key, and opname (operatorna in caallwells, opname in the Data Dictionary), which has the full name of the operating company.

Table #6: region – This table primarily relates to the geographic region in which the wells are located. There are 9 fields: apid, the primary key and a unique identifying integer given by the American Petroleum Institute (API).

There are additional identifying characteristics, which would be of primary interest to well owners: with the district (there are 4 distinct districts: Coastal, Inland, Northern, Southern), area_name (there are 212 distinct area names), field_name (there are 504 field names), county_name (there are 59 distinct counties: 58 of California’s counties, plus one for Los Angeles Offshore for offshore wells).

The next 3 fields – well_range, township, and well_section – are from the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). Raneg is the widest, there are 74 values. Township is second most general, there are 67 values. Section is the most specific, but they’re not unique identifiers, as different townships can have the same section. Unfortunately, these 3 fields are not specific enough to narrow down a well’s location, and cannot be combined to create a primary key, hence using the apid as a second unique well identifier.

The final value, geom, is a geographic point for the well, based on latitude and longitude from caallwells.

Table #7: well – The central table, which contains most of the identifying information about the wells. Among the fields, well id is the primary key, a serial number generated when importing from QGIS.

There are 6 foreign keys: well_status (linking to the status table), well_type (linking to the well_type table), opco (linking to the ownership table), meridian (linking to the base_meridian table), gis_source (linking to the gis_source table), and apid (linking to the region table).

Among the remaining fields, well_number is likely a number given by the operating company, there are 99,479 distinct well numbers, not enough for a unique identifier for each well. There are two fields that are Boolean true/false values: confidential (if subsurface information is held confidential for 2 years) and directional (whether the well was directionally drilled or not).

Additionally, spud_date is the date in which the well was drilled. As many fields are blank, due to incomplete data for older wells, blank text is converted into null in the SQL script below.

The field symbol is a combination of well_type and status, and geom is a geometry created from the latitude and longitude in caallwells. The field lease_name is either given by the State or by the operating company, there are 20,500 distinct lease names; not enough for a unique identifier.

3. Optimizations

This research report does not include index construction. There is one instance of denormalization, and that is including geometry in both the well and region tables. This is done for Question #2, to calculate distance between wells in the state, as one uses well id and one uses region apid.

4. Three Analytical Queries

Image 1: Locations of all oil and gas wells in California, overlaid on county boundaries.

Question #1. Which are the well ids, owners, status, locations, and distance in miles of the 5 nearest wells to the intersection of Hollywood and Vine? This shows how prevalent oil and gas wells are in California, even near a major tourist spot.

First, upload the California geocoder data set. There’s an in-depth process to install the PostGIS TIGER geocoder, creating tiger and tiger_data schemas, granting usage, and downloading data directly from the US Census Bureau’s website. Then one has to create nation and state scripts for California, and set the path to those.

As the TIGER geocoder was already installed for a previous project, this skips to installing the California state dataset, so that one can get the geographic coordinates for Hollywood and Vine. The below format will bring up the top 5 results for Hollywood and Vine’s latitude and longitude. ZIP code is from Google Maps. */

Hollywood and Vine: -118.32668 longitude, 34.101622 latitude

The results show at least 10 wells within 0.5 miles, which is quite surprising, though 9 of them are plugged and 1 is idle.

Image 2: Location of the 10 wells (in pink) nearest to Hollywood Boulevard (running east-west) and Vine Street (running north-south), both highlighted in yellow. This overlays the Los Angeles streets centerlines .shp file.

Question #2. Find the distance in miles from the wells in the northernmost county of Siskiyou, to the nearest well in the southernmost county of San Diego.

This intends to show where wells are located throughout the state, and could also be used to support the development of oil and gas pipelines.

In this exercise, one first selects the Siskeyou well (a.id, r.county_name = ‘Siskiyou’). The subquery measures the distance from the Siskeyou wells (a.geom) to the San Diego wells (b.geom, joined by region as g, and g.county_name = ‘San Diego’).

The construction b.id || ‘, Distance: ’ || is used to include both the well and the distance in the second column, which cannot be done otherwise. Here, one transforms both values into 3310, the NAD83 State Plane for California Albers, and divides by 5280 feet for miles.

One then orders the wells by geographic nearness using the KNN operator <->, here in the b.geom <-> a.geom, and limits them to one well each (limit 1).

Image 3: Location of all wells in Siskiyou county (the northernmost county) and San Diego county (the southernmost county).

Image 4: Locations of 2 wells in Siskiyou county and the nearest well in San Diego.

Question #3. In light of rising demand for natural gas, which 10 new or active dry gas wells are closest to Los Angeles county? Do not include wells in Los Angeles county. List the well id, operator name, well status, well type, and county name.

The top part should look familiar, in selecting the different attributes and joining the ownership and region tables. Instead of st_distance, this uses the KNN nearest neighbor operator <-> in ordering by the well id and nearness to Los Angeles county, and limiting the results to 10. This uses apid != apid, so the same wells are not chosen to themselves.

Of the 10 nearest wells, 9 are active and only 1 is new. Most of the wells are in northern California, in Sacramento County; or Colusa County or Glenn County, both of which are north of Sacramento. Kern County is closer to LA, in Bakersfield.

Image 5: Location of the 10 Active or New dry gas wells (pink) that are nearest to Los Angeles county (blue) that are not located in Los Angeles county itself.

5. ETL Process and Appendices

a. Appendix A: How to Obtain and Load the Data
This dataset is “Oil and Gas Wells Table, California,” which is downloaded as a .csv from CalGEM: https://gis.conservation.ca.gov/portal/home/item.html?id=0d30c4d9ac8f4f84a53a145e7d68eb6b.

Once the dataset is downloaded, one can use QGIS to import it into DBManager. First, in DBeaver, create an sddfinal schema.

In QGIS, click on DB Manager, connect to PostGIS. Click on Import Layer/File, and connect to the universe database (dbname=‘universe’, host=localhost, port=5432, sslmode=disable, username: postgres, password: postgres). Import this .csv as caallwells into the sddfinal schema. Primary key: id, geometry column: geom, source/target SRID: 4326. Convert field names to lowercase.

In DBeaver, set the search path to the sddfinal schema, public, and postgis. The caallwells table has 241,017 rows of data about onshore and offshore wells across California. One can check this by selecting all on the caallwells table.

c. Appendix C: Denormalization and Index

The only instance of denormalization is in having the geometry field in both well and region tables.

d. Appendix D: Data Dictionary

Datasets: “Oil and Gas Wells Table, California.” .csv file. Created: 5 August 2020.

See also: CalGEM Data Downloads.

Source: California DOGGR = CA Division of Oil, Gas, and Geothermal Resource. Now CalGEM Geologic Energy Management Division. https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/doggr/index.html

Data Dictionary: https://maps.conservation.ca.gov/doggr/metadata/allwells.html

6. Works Cited
[1]. “Oil and Gas.” California Department of Conservation. 2022. https://www.conservation.ca.gov/calgem/Pages/Oil-and-Gas.aspx
[2]. Cantu, Aaron. “California oil and gas industry leans on political heavyweights to drill wells.” 22 April 2022. Sacramento News & Review. https://sacramento.newsreview.com/2022/04/22/california-oil-and-gas-industry-leans-on-political-heavyweights-to-drill-wells/
[3]. “Historically Redlined Neighborhoods Are Burdened by Excess Oil and Gas Wells.” 27 April 2022. Columbia Climate School. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/04/27/historically-redlined-neighborhoods-are-burdened-by-excess-oil-and-gas-wells/

Finding IM Pei Half a World Away in Philadelphia and Doha, Qatar

On the Back of IM Pei Passing Away, Exploring the Legacy of His Waterfront Renewal Projects of Philadelphia’s Society Hill and Qatar’s Museum of Islamic Art

DOHA, Qatar — Standing sentinel on the southeast corner of the sparkling bay of Doha, Qatar rests the white limestone ziggurat of the Museum of Islamic. Walk past bobbing wooden dhows, the colonnade of swaying palm trees, and the central fountain, and the five stories of stacked Cubist blocks rise like a desert mirage.

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After crossing a drawbridge – the Museum rests on a man-made island – one enters the majestic lobby. The dome’s oculus splashes light onto the spiral staircase and geometric floor patterns. Elevated walkways provide motion, leading the eye to a soaring glass curtain for views of West Bay’s skyscrapers in the distance. At night, their neon outlines beam like pearls on a necklace.

Doha, the pop-up capital formerly of barasti huts, and gypsum and coral pearl merchant buildings lining the waterfront, struck oil in the late 1930s. Since the post-war period, Doha has been flush with funds from the world’s third largest natural gas reserves, and has been on a massive building boom – and needed an inspirational architect to design a museum that would put Doha on the global cultural map.

In 2008, the Qatar government opened one of the world’s leading Islamic art museums, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Chinese-American architect IM Pei. Objects – from Persian carpets to Middle Eastern mosque finials and Chinese porcelain – span 1,400 years of history across three continents.

IM Pei, who was in his 80s and semi-retired, took on selective projects. To experience Islamic architecture, he toured the great mosques of antiquity in Spain, India, Syria, Tunisia, and finally the Mosque of Ahmad Ibn Tulun in Cairo, Egypt. His Museum of Islamic Art could be interpreted as optimism towards globalization, of architectural building blocks, openness, and light fostering cultural exchange.

“Islam was one religion I did not know. So I studied the life of Muhammad. I went to Egypt and Tunisia. I became very interested in the architecture of defense, in fortifications,” IM Pei told the New York Times at the museum’s opening. “The architecture is very strong and simple. There is nothing superfluous.”

Doubly displaced from my previous Arabian Gulf stop in Abu Dhabi and my hometown of Philadelphia, the Museum of Islamic Art provided a space for contemplating bigger questions about History, Time, and Architecture, especially as starchitects like Jean Nouvel and David Chipperfield gave talks here in 2013.

Now, as Pei recently passed away at 102, and I’m on the tail-end of my near-decade in the Arabian/Persian Gulf, I can better understand that Pei was granted an ideal opportunity to divine the Museum of Islamic Art on its own geography – only a few bait and tackle shops and seafood restaurants remain in the neighborhood – and I knew from experience that IM Pei could tackle even larger and more complex urban renewal projects.

IM Pei’s Masterful Renewal of Philadelphia’s Old City

Waterfront urban renewal may seem relatively new– such as Barcelona for the 1992 Summer Olympics, Cardiff, Wales, or Genoa, Italy, in the 1990s. However, many American cities – from New York’s South Street Seaport to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor – adopted the “Festival City” model from the 1970s. Gritty docks, warehouses and row homes, working-class dock workers, and pushcart vendors were replaced by bland malls, museums, and concert spaces.

I grew up in one of IM Pei’s earlier signature projects – Society Hill, a deftly crafted urban renewal neighborhood created in the Old City of Philadelphia in the 1960s.

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By the mid-1940s, Philadelphia faced a flashpoint: accelerating de-industrialization, white flight to the suburbs, and the fallout of the middle-class tax base. Philadelphia’s legendary city planner Ed Bacon – he would later make the cover of Time Magazine in 1964 for his projects– backed by various Philadelphia government agencies, teamed up with IM Pei to reject the tabula rasa urban renewal of Le Corbusier and Robert Moses for a surgical repair to the urban fabric of among the country’s oldest port districts.

In 1957, Philadelphia City Planning commissioner Ed Bacon hosted a competition for replacing the aging Dock Street wholesale food and produce market. The developers Webb and Knapp won, and IM Pei and his team re-designed Washington Square East into Society Hill, named after Pennsylvania’s founders’ Free Society of Traders. The three 31-story Society Hill Towers anchor the 31-acre neighborhood. IM Pei brilliantly aligned the buildings’ waffle iron concrete facades with the street grid, and filled in the surrounding area with 25 townhouses.

According to a biography of IM Pei in the book “IM Pei and Society Hill: A 40th Anniversary Celebration,”: “Pei planned the towers to ‘frame’ views of important sites in the area, such as old Christ Church, the same way that traditional Chinese buildings frame views of gardens. He included trees, shrubs and open grassy areas, in line with William Penn’s original plan for Philadelphia to be a ‘Greene Countrie Towne.’”

In a feat of New Urbanism, greenways pass low-slung Modernist townhouses to connect to sites of worship and gardens. In an early stroke of historic preservation, Philadelphia government agencies seized 400 colonial-era townhouses and transferred them to upper-class residents to restore the homes. In recognition of Society Hill’s success, the then-IM Pei and Associates won a variety of architecture and planning awards in the 1960s.

Even decades later, Society Hill, in many ways, is an ideal neighborhood – safe, walkable, well-maintained, with a park and pool where I played with the few other children. Society Hill remains fiercely private and NIMBY, but also has a strong sense of community in hosting various events throughout the year.

Still, staring out across the waterfront, it’s hard not to grieve for the Philadelphia waterfront of not too long ago. Working-class stevedores and international longshoremen. Pushcart vendors crying out to customers stepping off the ferries from Camden. Smells and tastes of oyster houses and dive bars.

Appreciating IM Pei’s Urban Fabric

Back home in Philadelphia, I met IM Pei only once. I was in high school, and he visited for Society Hill Tower’s 40th anniversary celebration in 2003. He stepped out of the car, in his signature suit and Coke bottle glasses.

“It’s an honor to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand in awe. “Thank you for the welcome,” he replied. “I’ve heard there are problems with the pipes!” Amazing that he still knew the details of a long-ago project, and still trying to find solutions.

Now, as I look to return to Philadelphia and transition from communications into an urban planning-related field, I hope to take a similar approach to Pei’s in-depth understanding of delicate urban fabric to transform the built environment and to improve daily lives.

I recall gazing out the windows of my apartment, the traffic on Interstate-95 cruising past the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the city’s grid stretching into the distance, perhaps to the other side of the world, to my trips across the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, Asia. Having found IM Pei half a world away.

-Ends-

Cassette Culture: The UAE’s Last Remaining Cassette Tape Shops Hold the Arabian Gulf’s Musical Memory

A conversation about cassette culture in the UAE between artist and writer Hind Mezaina and DJ and founder of independent vinyl store The Flip Side, Shadi Megallaa, including music and artwork.

DUBAI – As the UAE’s last handful of cassette tape shops wind down their collections, they serve as the repository of 1980s-1990s Arabian Gulf musical memory, according to Hind Mezaina, a writer and artist, and Shadi Megallaa, a DJ and owner of The Flip Side, an independent record shop in Dubai.

The talk, “Cassette Culture in the UAE,” was part of the “Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play” series hosted by The National Pavilion of the UAE for La Biennale di Venezia.

On Dubai’s music scene in the early 1990s, Nima Nabavi in the magazine Bidoun, writes:

“We never had any “official” recordings out there; but there was a huge bootleg cassette industry run by a company called Thomsun Original. We never knew who this mysterious Mr. Thomsun was or why the bootlegs deserved the title “Original,” but many credit him with saving our childhoods with the sweet sounds of western music.

“Their seven dirham (about two US dollars) bootleg cassettes all had simple one-sheet card inserts, that were light blue all over with a smaller version of the actual album cover on the front, and their own typography and design everywhere else. None of the music was censored, but the fine people at Thomsun Original did misspell a lot of album names.”

Now, the last remaining cassette tape shops are mostly in the capital of Abu Dhabi, or the arts and culture hub of Sharjah, including (but not limited to): Al Balad Audio Cassettes, Andalib Recording, Kings Recording, and Shan Radio Centre.

“They’re still there, and have been around for 40, 50 years,” said Hind Mezaina. “Cassettes were not just for music, a lot of people used a cassette to record messages to send them back home. You can play again and listen to again, especially if you’re away from loved ones. Cassettes were also used to spread speeches, religious sermons. So, there is this underground culture of the cassette, there’s a bootleg culture, and we grew up literally with bootleg cassettes.”

Shadi Megallaa agreed on the bootleg culture – highlighting in his short documentary “Magnetic Fossils” about the music shops that make custom compilations on a USB drive, costing about AED 45 for 600 songs.

“So, the bootleg culture is alive and well,” said Shadi Megallaa. “I love the cassettes. I couldn’t believe that someone even cared about the cassettes. They’re like, oh, these are– like, you care about this? Almost impossible to find, like these artists, you won’t find them on iTunes or anything.”

Despite Nielsen reporting that cassette tape sales in the United States rose by 74 percent from 2015 to 129,000 units in 2016, the panelists were more concerned about the lack of formal preservation.

“There’s no official recording, there’s no archiving, there’s no proper kind of preservation,” said Hind Mezaina. “It’s a shame that these are the shops, who in no kind of role that they’re aware of, they are almost like the holders.”

Shadi Megallaa agreed on the challenges of formal preservation and digitization from cassette tape to MP3: “It takes a lot of time. You can digitize it, but where do you put it? Where’s it going to go? You start a website, you put it on there. It’s not hard to do. It’s just hard to get people to care because people don’t really care about much these days.”

Still, the 1980s through early 2000s were a fascinating cross-current of musical influences in Dubai. Residents had the Western influences of MTV UAE, Top of the Pops, and teen magazines Smash Hits and Jackie, and bootleg recordings of UK drum and base raves brought back. From the region, radio stations played Arabic, Bhangra, and Bollywood hits. At local soccer matches, you could hear the non-stop hypnotic drumming and chanting.

“Amongst Emirati teenagers, or young men and women, were hanging out in the mall and the boys would throw cassette tapes at girls,” said Hind Mezaina. “On the cassette tape would be the cassette number, the recordings, or songs, and then kind of love over the phone would start with these.”

Cassette tapes have even seen a recent revival during desert dune-bashing – where CDs would skip, cassette tapes are still hardy and the custom tunes can reflect drivers’ identities.

In an article in The National, said Vicky Tadros, a PhD student in Ethnomusicology at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, whose thesis is on “Listening: Khaleeji Style,” said:

“Even though the desert was being experienced in a thoroughly modern way in a turbo engine, it was still a way of ‘being Bedouin.’ It’s embedding this idea that, ‘I’m part of the tribe, I’m part of the community, I’m listening to the Bedouin music and engaging with the desert and surroundings around me’.” As one man told Tadros: “I only listen to Mehad Hamad when I’m in the desert. For me, Mehad Hamad is telling me about my history, my story, my culture, my everything.”

Dubai’s early music scene was dominated by cover bands and DJs at The Lion, Terminal, and The Lodge, and has grown by leaps and bounds. Still, many residents are mourning the recent closing of The Music Room, a rare independent music venue in Dubai.

“Yes, sadly it’s shut,” said Shadi Megallaa. “It’s one of the only places that championed live music and they would let anyone play, almost.”

-Ends-

Further Reading

Bedirian, Razmig. “Meet Abdullah Mohammed Khalili, the Owner of One of the Last Cassette Stores in the UAE.” – Shabab Al Wadi Recording Studio, Sharjah. The National. 24 June 2021.

Zacharias, Anna. “The UAE’s Unofficial National Pastime: Rounding.” The National. 2 December 2019.

Zacharias, Anna. “Avicii, Ahlam and Mehad Hamad: The Changing Tune of Khaleeji Culture.” The National. 5 September 2018.

Garratt, Rob. “What the Cassette Tape Revival Means for the UAE.” The National. 19 January 2018.

Saeed, Saeed. “The End of the Music Room Story Hints at a Rich Legacy for the Dubai Scene.” The National. 27 September 2017.

Campbell, Felicity. “The Music Room in Dubai Set to Close.” The National. 13 September 2017.

Dennehy, John. “Inside the Last DVD Rental and Cassette Shops of Abu Dhabi.” – Blue Diamond, The Copyright Company, Moon Video, Andalib Recording, Al Balad Audio Cassettes. The National. 2 September 2017.

Dennehy, John. “Press Rewind: Why Cassettes are Still King for One Abu Dhabi Shopkeeper.” – Al Balad Audio Cassettes, Abu Dhabi. The National. 2 March 2017.

“Magnetic Fossils: Cassette Archaeology.” The Flip Side. 2 February 2017.

Binicewicz, Kornelia. “Uzelli Cassettes: Bringing the Sounds of Turkey to 1970s and 1980s Germany.” The National. 2 November 2016.

Leech, Nick. “The Once and Future Kings of Retail: Abu Dhabi’s Hamdan Centre.” The National. 12 August 2013.

Holland, Jessica. “Nostalgia Breathes Life into Still-Loved Cassette Tape.” The National. 10 November 2011.

Nabavi, Nima. “My Travels with Thomsun (or Other Ways I Keep it Real in Old Dubai).” Bidoun Magazine. Spring 2005.