OIL AND GAS WELL-RECORD PRESERVATION

Since the oil and gas well-record files of the Kentucky Geological Survey are used extensively by the public and staff members, the paper files are deteriorating rapidly, and it has become evident that the files must be made available by some alternate method. In order to protect the original paper files from destruction by continual use, fire, and theft, and to make them simultaneously more accessible to Survey staff, industry, government representatives, and the general public, the individual well records are being optically scanned, and raster images are being stored on magnetic tape. These images include available petrophysical logs.

To date, records for 32,541 wells have been scanned, resulting in one of the largest data bases of its kind in the country. In 1991, records selected for scanning were arranged by priority, based on stratigraphic significance, in order to better meet increasing research and public demands.

A procedure to generate bar codes for document identification and indexing was implemented. Bar codes will be assigned to each page of each document that is to be scanned. The bar-coded information will be used to appropriately index each image and automatically generate unique file specifications for image storage. Strategies for accelerating the scanning operation have also been implemented. The emphasis is on processing and indexing oil and gas well-record data that are not currently available on computer, in order to prepare the documents for scanning. The procedures will eventually include ground-water and water-well information, coal records, and industrial-mineral data. Since implementing this new procedure in the last quarter of 1994, more that 8,000 oil and gas records have been processed.