Geological core storage

Solution Guides

Iron Mountain is the only information management company that can store and manage your core as well as your seismic assets.

July 18, 20146 mins

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Business challenge

Drill core and bore hole cuttings are extremely valuable and should be retained whenever possible, yet you’re being pressured to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs like never before. You need to reduce the time, effort and expense associated with managing your core assets, while keeping the material secure, protected and private. Your geoscientists and technicians need access to the material for reservoir modeling and drilling strategy. Additionally, the application of technologies such as CT scanning, is adding significant value to drill core analysis, but only if you have the core.

How this affects you

You understand the tremendous value that drill core and cuttings contribute to strategic decisions. You’re challenged to have space available for archiving core, yet you know that you need to retain and protect it.
You need to avoid additional capital costs and minimize the operating cost of storing drill core samples.
You need to have your drill core and cuttings securely maintained, easily available and conveniently located.

What if you could...

Preserve the value of your drill core and cuttings and have them readily available for business decisions?
Conveniently access your core samples in a comfortable and secure environment close to laboratories?
Repurpose your newly available space and lower your capital and operating costs?

Industry fact

0.5%
The public cost of core storage per year is only about 0.5% of the original cost of drilling, and 0.05% of what it would cost to drill the cores today.
Core Research Center, Accessed May 12, 2015

Iron Mountain geological core storage solution

Our new, purpose-built core facility in Houston, Texas has 200,000 cubic feet of storage with viewing rooms and is located near the heart of Houston’s Energy Corridor, close to commercial laboratories. Your core assets are protected by the right people, vehicles and processes during transit as well as storage. Our personnel have undergone rigorous background checks, employee screening and formalized training. All of our facilities use industry-leading protection, construction and sophisticated access control security systems. Our fleet is one of the 200 largest, private, commercial fleets in North America.

You’ll be able to easily and quickly access what you need, when you need it. We can support you with services to index your core. Our personnel will lay out and re-rack your core samples—to your specifications—for viewing and analysis. You’ll have use of multiple viewing rooms with full-spectrum lighting and specialized tools and equipment, including steel layout tables, mobile workstations with power, table and hand held microscopes, iPad® tablets for viewing images and UV Chroma to view. You’ll have use of our secure, wireless connectivity, conference room with online monitor and our break room. You’ll be able to use our facility as an extension of your own—a comfortable, convenient, productive and private workplace for your staff.

With more than 1.75 million cubic feet of core storage, we operate specialized drill core storage facilities in Calgary, Canada; Aberdeen, Scotland and Tananger, Norway. Iron Mountain services all of the super major and 90% of the major oil and gas companies.¹ We have serviced the Energy Industry for more than 30 years and currently manage billions of Energy information assets. Iron Mountain is the only information management company that can store and manage your core as well as your seismic assets, well logs and well files.

Customer success story

Problem

An oil and gas corporation sought a partner to help consolidate their core portfolio spread across multiple locations and vendors. They needed to reduce the time, effort and expense it took to manage their core assets, while keeping them secure and private during storage and transportation. They also wanted to enhance the accessibility of the core cuttings and minimize transportation and handling to reduce the risk of physical damage.

Partnering with Iron Mountain allowed them to achieve these goals. They were able to consolidate their core and cuttings to a single, purpose-built facility and use it as an extension of their own— a comfortable, convenient and private workplace for their staff. They avoided an additional capital expenditure and had predictable and reasonable operating costs.

Iron Mountain solution

Secure, private transportation and storage in purpose-built facilities
Personnel with rigorous background checks
Viewing rooms for core layout, each with security, full-spectrum lighting, specialized tools and equipment
Personnel to layout and re-rack core samples for examination
Secure wireless connectivity and a conference room with monitor for online collaboration
Optional services for core indexing

¹Iron Mountain and Gartner data, 2013.