The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) announced today the release of a 4 CD-ROM set containing paleontological, production, pipeline, and lease history data covering the 50-year history of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico Region. This new product, "50 Year Anniversary Offshore Oil and Gas CD Collection," incorporates all elements needed by most companies for historical evaluation of prospects for lease, purchase, or development.

"Designed to give the public a compact history of Gulf of Mexico development, this CD-ROM set will be invaluable to the landmen, legal offices, and industry personnel involved in research of Federally owned and leased properties," explained MMS Director Cynthia Quarterman. "By packaging and updating all 4 CD-ROM’s of this most requested information at the same time, MMS is providing the maximum value for its customers while meeting their needs."

The latest addition to products provided in this manner is the newly created "Lease History CD-ROM." It tracks changes in ownership and operating rights for all Gulf of Mexico leases since 1947, and provides complete descriptions of each lease. This information was previously unavailable except by request, one lease at a time, at a cost of $2 per page. This new CD will eliminate specific requests for this data, cut the cost to the customer, allow the customer to have immediate access to this report of over 25,000 pages, and reduce time expended by MMS employees.

Included in the package are separate CD’s containing over 1,400 paleontological reports and almost 150,000 pages of monthly production data that were compiled and released to the public last year. In addition, a pipeline CD, made available by the recent digitization of the MMS pipeline mapping system, contains 4,232 pages listing every surveyed point of each pipeline, and provides both X,Y coordinates and latitude/longitude coordinates of each point.

The CD-ROM’s are self contained with an Adobe Acrobat reader ready for downloading for viewing on any personal computer, even those with modest capability. The CD comes with detailed instructions for downloading Acrobat and for using the disk to obtain required information. On some of the CD’s there is also an ASCII file of data for incorporation into the customer’s own database for mapping or more sophisticated searches. Copies of the 4 disk CD-ROM set can be ordered for $60 by calling 1-800-200-GULF, or by sending a fax to (504) 736-2620.