$7.3 million Perth Core Library upgrade opens 'on budget and on time'

Mines and Petroleum Minister Sean L’Estrange today officially opened the $7.3 million upgrade of the Department of Mines and Petroleum (DMP) Perth Core Library.

Expansion works have increased the core library storage area by 3500 square metres which has nearly doubled the number of pallets it can store from 8640 to more than 15,000.
The world-class facility in Carlisle now also has a new covered viewing area that provides confidentiality, a dedicated temperature-controlled area to house the Hylogger spectral scanner used to analyse drill core, and a conference room.

“Everyone involved in this project deserves congratulations for bringing it in on time and on budget,” Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) Acting Executive Director Don Flint said.

Mr Flint said that the expansion had prevented the possibility of the library running out of room for core samples through a massive increase in supply in recent years due largely to the State Government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme’s Co-Funded Drilling Program.

“A 300 per cent increase in waiting times to view core has been problem in the past 10 years, but this situation will be markedly improved by the upgrade,” he said.

• “This is a red-letter day for GSWA, the resources sector and academia that celebrates the guarantee of the core library’s continuing invaluable contributions to geoscience and mineral and petroleum exploration in Western Australia.”
• Mr Flint said that expansion of DMP’s Joe Lord Core Library in Kalgoorlie was a possibility and the department was considering plans to deal with the likelihood that the Goldfields facility could become full in the next years.

Fact file:

• The Perth Core Library came into official existence as a secure facility in 2003 but the Government of Western Australia has been storing core and cuttings on site ever since the first onshore petroleum well was drilled at Rough Range in 1953.

• The core library stores mineral and petroleum core and cuttings obtained from industry under various State and Commonwealth legislation and also houses geotechnical drilling and stratigraphic core and rock samples collected by the Geological Survey of Western Australia.

• The facility also operates as the western hub of the National Offshore Petroleum Data and Core Repository on behalf of NOPTA and Geoscience Australia, and will store two-thirds of all Commonwealth-managed petroleum core from offshore drilling

• The core library’s busiest year was 2015–16, when a record of 116,000 metres of core was laid out for inspection.

Video showing site demolition, preparation and building of the expansion of Western Australia’s Core Library which now has capacity to hold 15,000 pallets of core.