1995 National Oil and Gas Assessment 1/4-Mile Cells within the Central Coastal Province

Cell maps for each oil and gas play were created by the USGS as a method for illustrating the degree of exploration, type of production, and distribution of production in a play or province.

Each cell represents a quarter-mile square of the land surface, and the cells are coded to represent whether the wells included within the cell are predominantly oil-producing, gas-producing, both oil and gas-producing, or dry. The well information was initially retrieved from the Petroleum Information (PI) Well History Control System (WHCS), which is a proprietary, commercial database containing information for most oil and gas wells in the U.S. Cells were developed as a graphic solution to overcome the problem of displaying proprietary WHCS data.