New insights into old data

Oil and mining companies often underuse archive or vintage gravity and magnetic data in prospect evaluation for several reasons. The short time frame of many exploration projects means that the data can only be used effectively if they are already in an accessible and digital form when required. The lack of knowledge of what data actually exist and where they are located within the company, or externally, can be major obstacles. Even if the data are found, they may be in an unfriendly or unusable analog format, at a number of different scales and projections, and thus difficult to work with. However, the data might not be found at all because knowledge of proprietary or traded data, its form and whereabouts may have gone with persons who have left the company as a result of down‐sizing.