Version 3.0 of the CoalLog standard has recently been released.

CoalLog has been developed with financial assistance from the Australian Coal Association Research Program (ACARP) by a number of committees with representatives from most major mining, consulting and software companies in the Australian coal industry. It was first released in February 2012 and the current version (v3.0) was released in April 2021.

The CoalLog standard includes data entry sheets and standard dictionaries of code lookup tables for coal borehole header, drilling, lithology, water flow, geotechnical and quality data, a format for the transferal of this data, a borehole logging training manual and standard plotting patterns and colours for all its defined lithotypes and lithology qualifiers.

Before CoalLog, there were approximately 30 different data formats and over 100 different dictionaries being used for the capture of geological and geotechnical data from boreholes throughout the Australian coal industry. Additionally, each of the major Australian geological software companies used different conventions for the transferal of this data. These different formats, dictionaries and transferal conventions have led to major inefficiencies in the collection, transfer and analysis of coal borehole data. CoalLog has overcome many of these inefficiencies. The Geological Surveys of both New South Wales and Queensland have adopted it and will be requiring any coal exploration data provided as CoalLog data transfer files.

Further information regarding the standard, manuals and training materials are available from the AusIMM web site.