In response to numerous enquiries by petroleum exploration personnel on the availability of geochemical information, a new data base – ORGCHEM – has been created.
This new database is based on the relational database management system ORACLE. ORGCHEM integrates non-BMR and BMR-generated geochemical data. Within ORGCHEM the locality data includes basin, well, formation, and depth, while the geochemical data information covers Rock-Eval, organic carbon content, and vitrinite reflectance values. This is basic data relevant to organic maturation levels, source richness, and source type, and is of primary importance to petroleum exploration personnel involved in assessing the petroleum prospectiveness of an area or modelling petroleum generation.
The bulk of the non-BMR-generated information is derived from well-completion reports acquired by BMR through past and present Government regulatory Acts, PSSA, and PSLA (pre-1980 offshore wells only). From these sources over 12,000 records have been compiled. The Organic Geochemistry Facility within the Onshore Sedimentary and Petroleum Geology Program has undertaken the task of extracting the remaining geochemical data from post-1980 PSLA-acquired well-completion reports.
ORGCHEM also contains all organic geochemical and isotopic information produced within the BMR since 1982. The principle source of this information is from organic geochemical investigations undertaken within the Organic Geochemistry Facility. Already ORGCHEM contains over 4000 records of ‘in-house’ generated data.
Concurrently with this data accumulation phase, links with PEDIN (Petroleum Data Exploration Index) are being developed to enable interested persons to perform user-pay customised retrieval of open-file geochemical data for specific, basinal, or regional studies.
Published in the BMR Research Newsletter 13.
