New Mexico has a rich legacy of petroleum and mineral exploration and production, most of which has involved subsurface investigations. Hundreds of thousands of holes have been drilled into the subsurface, some to depths of 20,000 feet or more. Considerable data have been collected from these wells in the form of electrical or geophysical logs, cuttings, and rock cores. These materials contain a rich lode of information about the kinds of rocks that lie below the surface, how porous and permeable they are, and even what types of fluids they contain.
Part of the Mission of New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources is to serve as a repository for these kinds of data. Data in our collections have been acquired from wells drilled throughout the state over the last 90 years. We currently have more than 15 million pieces of unique subsurface data in our collections, much of it stored in seven steel storage buildings on campus.
Core - 20,000+ boxes (oil & gas and mining) from 4,000+ wells
Cuttings - 51,0000+ boxes from 16,600+ wells
Geophysical Logs (some with mudlogs)- 50,000+ wells
Porosity and Permeability Analyses
Petroleum Source Rock Analyses
Well records - 100,000+ wells
Drillers logs - 17,000+ wells
Sample descriptions and sample logs - 4,300+ wells
Historic petroleum exploration maps with well locations in 26 counties
Pool maps with locations of producing oil and gas pools by stratigraphic unit
Historic production data - Pre-2002
