A large U.S. operator preparing to bid in a federal offshore lease sale in the Gulf of America had the same problem as every other bidder: decades of public well files, and not enough time to read them. NthDS Crawler read the mud logs in the public BOEM and BSEE archives, extracted the hydrocarbon indicators by depth, and ranked the blocks on offer. The client is not named.
Key Points
- Source: public BOEM and BSEE historical well files across the shelf
- Extracted: shows, zones of interest, and mud weights, each tied to depth
- Cited: every indicator traced to its interval and page
- Output: auction blocks ranked by hydrocarbon indicator density
The Problem
Before a federal offshore lease sale, every bidder can download the same historical well files. The mud logs in those files record what the drill bit saw: shows, gas, lithology, and mud weights, foot by foot. They are some of the most direct evidence of hydrocarbons in an area.
They are also scanned images, decades of them. Reading every mud log by hand in the window before a sale isn't practical, so most teams sample the archive or rely on summaries. Whatever is in the logs nobody reads stays unread.
What Crawler Did
- Pulled the public archives. Crawler collected historical well files from BOEM and BSEE across the shelf.
- Extracted hydrocarbon indicators. It read each mud log the way a geologist would and recorded shows, zones of interest, and mud weights.
- Correlated every indicator to depth, with a citation to the interval and page it came from.
- Ranked the blocks on offer by indicator density against the acreage in the sale.
The Result
The client went into the sale with a ranked list of blocks built from every mud log in the archive, not a sample. Every indicator behind the ranking links back to its source page, so the client's geologists could check any block against the original log before deciding how to bid.
Same public archive, every bidder. Only one of them read all of it.
Who This Is For
Exploration and business development teams preparing for a lease sale, evaluating an acquisition, or screening a basin from public records. The same extraction works on mud logs from state regulators, an acquired company's well files, or your own archive.
Related: best way to digitize well logs and 130,000+ SEG-Y volumes in one seismic inventory.
FAQ
What did Crawler extract from the mud logs?
Hydrocarbon indicators: shows, zones of interest, and mud weights, each tied to its depth. Every indicator is cited to the interval and page it came from.
How were the lease blocks ranked?
Each indicator was located by well and depth, then the blocks on offer were ranked by hydrocarbon indicator density against the acreage in the sale.
Can Crawler read our own mud logs, not just public ones?
Yes. Crawler reads scanned mud logs from any source, onshore or offshore, and extracts shows and zones of interest by depth. For a per-log digitizing price on your own logs, see the well log digitizing guide.
Is this only for offshore?
No. The same approach works anywhere there is a large mud log archive, such as state regulator records or an acquired company's well files.
Run It on Your Mud Logs
- A few mud logs of your own: create a free account and upload them. You get depth-indexed data with every mud weight change, and new accounts start with $10 of free credit.
- A basin, a data room, or an archive: send it to us and we'll show you the shows and zones of interest by depth. Book a 15-minute demo.