The Mining Act states that the drilling operator must provide the results of the measurements in a borehole and the measurements of material from a borehole to the Dutch government (see the Mining Act, articles 109 and 110). TNO-NITG manages these data for the government for which there is a confidentiality period (see the Mining Act, articles 116 and 177). Once this period has passed, TNO-NITG makes the data public.

All boreholes begin life as exploration boreholes, the purpose of which is to explore the presence of minerals or the collection of additional data on minerals. Evaluation or appraisal boreholes are exploration boreholes that explore the size and extent of gas and oil fields. A borehole may simply remain a exploration borehole or be used at an appropriate time for the production of minerals when it then becomes known as a development well, or simply a well.

Boreholes in DINOShop may have the same surface location. This usually means that secondary boreholes, the so-called sidetracks, have been drilled out from the main borehole; sidetracks can be recognised by their name. But boreholes may also have been given the same surface location when they were drilled from the same platform.

The DINOShop user sees immediately which data are available for offshore boreholes, but for onshore boreholes it is different. The introduction of the Mining Act on 1 January 2003 suddenly released all the data of boreholes older than ten years, some 3,012 boreholes in all. The DINOShop user sees the name, location and owner of those boreholes though it is not always possible to show exactly what data per borehole are available. The reason for this is that TNO-NITG is currently checking on the quality of the database. Until such time as DINOShop has a proper overview of the data available per borehole, such an overview will be made for the user by request. The user also receives information about the delivery time of the data.

In the course of the year new borehole data will be released and TNO-NITG will add these every six months to DINOShop, on 15 January and 15 July. TNO-NITG will of course also supply public data not yet available through DINOShop upon request.

Please select a datatype at the home page if you want to request data.