oa Cooper Basin workstation data provision - pitfalls and progress

Santos has provided Primary Industries and Resources South Australia (PIRSA) with a copy of its workstation files of seismic and well data covering the Cooper and Eromanga Basins of South Australia, The seismic dataset includes workstation-loaded data for over 5000 seismic lines while the well dataset covers 1300 wells in the former PELs 5 and 6 licence areas. These data are now available to other explorers to facilitate successful exploration in the area.

The 2D seismic stacked section data were provided in GeoFrame archive format, while a separate GeoFrame project file exists for well data. The seismic dataset provided by Santos contains a comprehensive set of seismic lines from 1975 to 2000, with several versions of many lines. Bulk shifts/timing issues have been resolved between data vintages and coordinates are included with the trace data.

Whilst the data are reasonably easy to load into GeoFrame workstations, substantial effort has been undertaken to enable loading into other interpretative platforms. This paper describes a number of issues raised in the transcription and the outcomes of the process.

The result of these processes is the ability of PIRSA to now provide to all parties interested in the Cooper and Eromanga Basins, a consistent and comprehensive set of 2D seismic data and well data that is readily loadable to a range of workstation platforms.