Competing versions of GDAL

This is confusing, and a question I’ve harvested from a duplicate, so let me start with my setup.

• OS: Windows 7 x64
• GIS Client 1: ArcGIS Desktop 10.5
• GIS Client 2: ArcGIS Pro 1.4
• GIS Client 3: Boundless Desktop 1.0 (QGIS 2.14)

Background

Many of the scripts I write, I try to keep open-source for those without a fancy ArcGIS license. However, I can’t set PyQGIS as my default system interpreter in my environment variables because it will break many of the tools in ArcMap. So I have taken the approach of making ArcGIS’s Python instance the system Python, and installing open-source libraries there (and using .pth files to pull in qgis.core functionality if I need it). I am using Gohlke’s precompiled GDAL wheel (32-bit) in this case. I am operating under the assumption that this breaks the fewest amount of things.

Problem

I have multiple installs of GDAL, and the system seems to keep defaulting to one of them, ignoring any environment variables I set.

C:Program FilesGDAL contains version 2.1.0 (64-bit).

C:Python27ArcGIS10.5Libsite-packagesosgeo contains version 2.1.3 (32-bit).

C:Program FilesGDAL appears nowhere in my user environment variables.

Instead, I have the variables:

GDAL_DATA pointing to C:Python27ArcGIS10.5Libsite-packagesosgeodatagdal

and a variable called

GDAL_DRIVER_PATH pointing to C:Python27ArcGIS10.5Libsite-packagesosgeo.

C:Python27ArcGIS10.5Libsite-packagesosgeo is in my PATH.

Yet, when I open a command prompt and type ogrinfo --version it does not give me 2.1.3 (the version in PATH) but rather 2.1.0 (the 64-bit version in Program FilesGDAL, which is nowhere in PATH).

What gives?

Answers that do not answer my question

How to force QGIS to use GDAL version?

Unable to call GDAL functionalities from Python

How to add support for FileGDB (Esri file gdb API) driver in fiona?

GDAL version in QGIS

Does Gohlke GDAL break Command-Line GDAL/OGR in Windoiws?