Introduction

The continental shelf of the Republic of South Africa covers some 200 000 km² and the country has a coastline approximately 3 000 km in length.

Petroleum Agency SA is responsible for the archive and management of the national hydrocarbon exploration database on behalf of the State. It has digitised, indexed and archived all of the data and reports resulting from the drilling of more than 300 offshore and some 200 onshore boreholes.
The exploration database also include seismic field and processed data for more than 300 000 line km's of 2D and 40 000 km² of 3D seismic data that was acquired offshore and some 9800 km of seismic processed data that was acquired during the late 1960's in the Karoo, Algoa and Zululand onshore basins.

Being the custodian of the National Petroleum Exploration and Production Database of South Africa,
the Agency relies on a sustainable and effective Information Management Infrastructure in order to comply with its mandate to:

- Archive and maintain a database on petroleum exploration & production data.
- Provide access to existing data, cores, well samples, information and literature on request.
- Add value and incorporate new as well as interpreted data into the database.
- Maintain records of all hydrocarbon exploration and production activities.