The Minerals Management Service (MMS) Gulf of Mexico OCS Region on Wednesday introduced an online oil and gas public information database to allow viewing and downloading of public documents on the industry. Available documents will include Well Summary Reports, Sundry Notices, Applications for Permit to Drill, Plans, Pipeline Rights-of-Way Files and Suspensions of Production and Operations.

“This is a tremendous improvement in our customer service capability and for the thousands of customers who use our oil and gas records for activity in the ocean,” said Chris Oynes, MMS Gulf of Mexico regional director. “This Internet access to various records will potentially save them considerable time and expense.”

Each document will consist of a set of raster format (TIFF) images that can be viewed and downloaded separately. There are 980,000 images available to the public. The documents can be searched by using six different indexes: Expired Leases, G&G Permits, Plans, Rights-of-Way, Suspensions of Production and Operations and Well Files. Each index is used to search through different types of documents, and each index has appropriate criteria the user can enter. For example, the G&G Permits index is used to search through all Geological and Geophysical Permits by entering certain criteria. In contrast, the Well Index is used to search through Well Summary Reports, Sundry Notices and Applications for Permit to Drill with other specific criteria.

To make the system more user friendly, MMS is now converting the TIFF images to Adobe Acrobat, or PDF, format. This process should be completed by the end of the year. The system is available at www.gomr.mms.gov.

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