Coal exploration drill-hole lithologic, geophysical, and geochemical data for the western Kentucky Mississippi embayment area

Coal exploration drill-hole lithologic, geophysical, and geochemical data from 657 drilling locations in the western Kentucky Mississippi embayment area are provided in this data release. Eighteen drilling locations have multiple sets of data files. The wells are located in eight counties (Ballard, Calloway, Carlisle, Fulton, Graves, Hickman, Marshall, and McCracken) and were drilled between 1976 and 1977 by Phillips Petroleum Company (Phillips). The hard-copy paper data were donated to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 2001 by the North American Coal Corporation, which purchased the Phillips assets as part of a larger dataset. Under the terms of the agreement with North American Coal Corporation, the data were deemed proprietary until February 2011, a period of 10 years after the donation. Detailed well header information for each record is provided as a comma-separated value (CSV) text file. Also included are zipped files for each county containing drill-hole lithologic, geophysical, and geochemical data scans in Portable Document Format (PDF). The scanned data contained in this release were not previously included in USGS Open-File Report Series 2011-1261: Shallow Coal Exploration Drill-Hole Data -- Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. The dataset was created to electronically preserve the historical well information which is made publicly available by this report.