U.S. Department of the Interior Minerals Management Service Gulf of Mexico OCS Region NEWS RELEASE

MMS Online Ordering System a Success as E-Government Initiative

MMS Director Johnnie Burton today praised the early success of the web-based Online Ordering System, launched a little over two months ago by Minerals Management Service (MMS) Gulf of Mexico Region. “This is proving to be a success for the many users of well logs in the energy and geologic community,” she said. “The response from the customers has been very positive. During the first two months of operation, 180 CD’s containing over 33,000 well log images have been delivered.”

“The Online Ordering System for oil and gas well logs is an important step for MMS in promoting the President’s E-government agenda and developing cost-effective customer service systems,” said Director Burton. “By partnering with the Department’s National Business Center, we were able to keep development costs to a minimum for the secure credit card transaction module.”

The system allows customers to search for and select from a collection of over 200,000 publicly releasable well log images stored in TIFF raster files. Once the images have been selected, the customer builds a custom CD-ROM containing the image files and places an order for the CD-ROM via a secure credit card transaction. In addition, the customer can create CD’s as needed and purchase them at a later date, review their order history, and track orders that have been filled and mailed.

MMS employees also have benefited from the new system as well. The need to retrieve paper logs from the well files to fill customer’s orders has been virtually eliminated. Historically, it took approximately 30 days to fill a customer’s request, which was limited to about 125 well logs. The new system completes the order in less than 30 minutes from the time the order is placed, and there is no limit to the number of logs that can be ordered. A customer can place up to 200 log images on a CD for a flat fee of $15 per CD.

Ongoing communication with customers has resulted in improvements to the system. “We are listening to the customers and making changes accordingly,” said MMS Director Johnnie Burton. “Our goal is to provide customers with data in a manner that is useful and efficient.” Plans call for the expansion of the system’s inventory to include paleo and seismic data as well as publications and reports.

MMS is the federal agency in the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages the nation's oil, natural gas and other mineral resources on the outer continental shelf in federal offshore waters. The agency also collects, accounts for and disburses mineral revenues from federal and Indian leases. These revenues totaled nearly $10 billion in 2001 and more than $120 billion since the agency was created in 1982. Annually, nearly $1 billion from those revenues go into the Land and Water Conservation Fund for the acquisition and development of state and federal park and recreation lands.

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