Abstract: Experience with Petroleum-Industry Computerized Scout-Record File

W. L. Hiss

The Permian Basin Well Data System (PBWDS) data file was completed in 1965 as the first scout-ticket file recorded on magnetic tape by the petroleum industry. This data file has been used by the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico and Texas in interrelated groundwater, geologic, and quality-of-water studies from 1966 to the present. Well records in the computerized files are identified by unique record numbers and name, and are located by latitude-longitude coordinates and legal land-grid descriptions. Additional information useful to various hydrologic and geologic studies includes drilling and completion data, depth of well and depths to formations penetrated, position and type of cores cut, pressure measurements during the testing of the well, type of fluid and amount recovered, logs run, and the final disposition of the well.

Experience has shown that cross indexes containing operator and lease names, location of the well, depth, unique record (reference) number, and other pertinent information edited from the data tapes and prepared with simple sort-and-print routines are indispensable to any study using data files. Maps depicting structural positions of key horizons and thicknesses of selected formations may be prepared directly from the data file under computer-program control and displayed on various media for further interpretation. It is virtually impossible to search for documents in the original files possessed by many companies, when thousands of wells are involved. However, a computer-programmed search of the files for specific information may yield data directly, or provide the user with a descr ption of wells for which a further direct manual search of original files can be made.

A programmed search for drill-stem tests in which any of the initial or final shut-in pressures and/or the initial or final-flow pressures were approximately equivalent provided information suitable for use in construction of potentiometric maps.

Computer-based petroleum industry well-data files are a valuable primary source of basic information that can be utilized to advantage at nominal cost in many geologic and hydrologic studies.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90979©1975 AAPG – SEPM Rocky Mountain Sections Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, New Mexico