AK geologic materials inventory online

Want to know what core samples, rock microscope slides or other materials from Alaska oil and gas wells are available in the Alaska Geologic Materials Center? You can now open up Google Earth on your computer, find the well and click on the well symbol to find out. There’s also a similar capability for mining prospects and boreholes.

This new online capability is the result of a GMC initiative to hook its inventory database into Google Earth, to make most of the center’s oil, gas and mineral inventory more readily available to the public, GMC curator Kenneth Papp told Petroleum News April 28. GMC also sees online access as a means for the center to interact with the public, with people perhaps making suggestions for data additions or pointing out corrections to the existing inventory data, Papp said.

“The database we had was (previously) only available internally to staff and myself,” Papp said.

The Alaska Department of Natural Resources operates the Alaska Geologic Materials Center in cooperation with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Minerals Management Service. The center contains a major archive and library of Alaska rock samples and holds an almost complete collection of core and drill-cutting samples from oil and gas wells drilled in Alaska and on the Alaska outer continental shelf. The collection at the center also includes numerous microscope slides from well samples and many thousands of rock samples from the mining industry.

To use the interface you need to have Google Earth installed on your computer. Then click on the Google Earth GMC inventory link in the GMC inventory page of the GMC website. The GMC website is in the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Services website at www.dggs.alaska.gov.

—Alan Bailey