There has been oil and gas exploration in New York State since the 1860s, and geophysical well logs have been recorded and deposited in state well information repositories since the 1930s. These logs contain a wealth of information that has largely been overlooked in the recently intensified search for new petroleum and natural gas reserves. The majority of old wells were drilled by small companies using numerous logging contractors. There were a wide variety of logging tools and an astonishing number of both vertical and horizontal scales employed. Often log interpretation was minimal. Regional exploration has been very difficult because of this general lack of well-to-well uniformity, as displayed by the various logs.

The Department of Geology at Syracuse University has compiled a data base of digitized computer processable well logs for a large part of central New York State. These logs have been standardized to a uniform lithology response and uniform scales for optimum correlation, porosity computation, and lithology evaluation. Evaluation of these corrected logs suggests that reservoirs which were either overlooked or considered uneconomic when the wells were drilled could, under today's economic conditions, provide extensive new and potentially profitable gas reserves.

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