Proceedings Volume Cover
SPE 59722  
A Prospectors Dream Come True: Tons of Unique Data, All Under One Roof!  
Damian Barrett and Bob Trentham  
Copyright 2000, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.  
need or do tech work for you for a minimal charge.  
This paper was prepared for presentation at the 2000 SPE Permian Basin Oil and Gas  
Recovery Conference held in Midland, Texas, 21–23 March 2000.  
Poster Session  
This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE Program Committee following review of  
information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper, as  
presented, have not been reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to  
correction by the author(s). The material, as presented, does not necessarily reflect any  
You will not want to miss seeing this poster session. You will  
get to see some of this unique data, pictures of where it is  
stored; books with listings of the special core, DST, and mud  
log data sorted by operator or location for you to look through.  
If for some reason, you did not make it to the conference to  
position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its officers, or members. Papers presented at  
SPE meetings are subject to publication review by Editorial Committees of the Society of  
Petroleum Engineers. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper  
for commercial purposes without the written consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is  
prohibited. Permission to reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300  
see the poster, you will be able to view it online at:  
best way to learn more about the library is to call in and set an  
words; illustrations may not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous  
acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper was presented. Write Librarian, SPE, P.O.  
Box 833836, Richardson, TX 75083-3836, U.S.A., fax 01-972-952-9435.  
appointment for your own personal tour.  
Abstract  
Have you ever worked on a prospect that all you needed to  
Vision Statement  
finish it off was a mud log or core analysis on that one older  
well in your cross-section? Or you drilled your first well in  
your prospect and needed a full scale offset log to correlate  
with on location? Now you can have access to the largest and  
unique collection of data in the Permian Basin – all under one  
roof, The Midland Energy Library (MEL). This old, new and  
unique data has not been lost, it has been donated to MEL.  
The vision of the library is to become the primary repository  
and database for scientific, geological and engineering data  
relating to the United States oil and gas industry and to make  
this data available to the public through a working library. It  
is further vision that by becoming the database for the United  
States oil and gas industry, the library can assist the City of  
Midland in achieving its goal of becoming the headquarters  
city for the independent segment in the United States oil and  
gas industry.  
Mission Statement  
The Mission of MEL is to collect, preserve, catalog and  
exhibit scientific, geological and engineering data gathered by  
the petroleum industry into a working library for use by  
industry professionals, educators, students and other members  
of the interested public.  
Rare Specialty Data  
MEL has over 1550 DST’s and 8570 mud logs in Texas, over  
350 DST’s and 2400 mud logs in NM and over 6750 core  
reports in Texas and NM and over 55,000 sample logs. One to  
4000 ownership map spotted weekly with new wells from PI  
weekly reports. Gravity and Magnetic maps, velocity surveys,  
dipmeters and synthetics. There are even company donated  
prospect files that are just waiting to be found and drilled.  
There are over 550,000 Fusulinid slides with microscopes and  
a petrographic microscope with a camera. The collections are  
from Hollingsworth, Wendell Stewart, Van Howbert, Ed  
Volger and John M. Cys. Byrums 15 volume set of rules and  
regulations. There are over 670,000 Texas large and small-  
scale logs and 177,000 NM large and small scale logs. One of  
the best resources is the friendly, helpful staff that knows  
where everything is and can quickly help you find what you