AN IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE IMPORTANCE OF WELL MATERIALS AND THEIR PRESERVATION IN REPOSITORIES

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Core Research Center (CRC), in Denver, Colorado is a geological materials repository that provides public access to a vast collection of scientifically valuable well material. The CRC’s collection of core and cuttings has been amassed from boreholes located in 33 states, predominantly from and adjacent to the Rocky Mountain region. Currently, the collection contains rock cores from more than 9,800 wells and cuttings from more than 53,000 wells. Annually, about 1,200 researchers from industry, academia, the USGS, and other government agencies use the CRC to find energy and mineral reserves, information for theses and dissertations, and data to determine and verify resource assessments.

In the past, the CRC collections were mostly used for oil and gas exploration. As the need for critical minerals, alternative energy reserves, and novel approaches to greenhouse gas sequestration increases, the collections are demonstrating their value in mineral and helium exploration, geothermal technology, and carbon storage research.

Discovery of the holdings are provided by the online CRC Well Catalog which is searchable via map and text-based interfaces. Core photos, analysis data, and thin section images are available for viewing and download from the CRC website. After a catalog search, interested parties can request access to the materials by scheduling an appointment to visit the CRC. Staff will retrieve the requested core or cuttings for scheduled CRC visitors and provide samples for them to analyze at their own laboratory if desired. CRC policy requires raw data from analyses to be returned and shared with all stakeholders to ensure the removed sample material lives on as reusable data.

Preservation in public repositories like the CRC allows current and future scientists access to an important resource that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to obtain due to the expense of drilling or other constraints. Continued reuse of existing materials saves time, money, and environmental impacts. In addition, these rock materials provide researchers the opportunity to see, touch, and interact with a small segment of the otherwise invisible, untouchable depths of planet Earth.