The Former British Petroleum Microfossil Collection

In 1991 BP donated to The Natural History Museum their Micropalaeontological Collection. This collection has an extensive geographical and stratigraphic coverage and is a record of BP’s exploration activity since the 1950s.

The Collection has subsequently been curated and catalogued and major part of the Collection is now available as a searchable database.

The database hold details of material from over 3,500 individual well runs. The collection includes micropalaeontological assemblage slides and residues; palynological slides and residues and nannofossil slides from wells and outcrop from over 120 countries world-wide, including:

Mediterranean: 
Italy , Greece, Sicily, Turkey, Malta, offshore Adriatic.

North West Europe: 
Netherlands, onshore and offshore U.K., offshore Norway, Germany, Austria, Spain, Luxembourg, offshore Ireland, Poland, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium.

Central and South America: 
Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile.

West Indies area: 
Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua, Haiti, Cuba, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic.

Pacific and North America: 
Arctic, Alaska, Canada, Newfoundland, Greenland, U.S.A. (California and Texas).

North Africa: 
Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Canary Islands.

West Africa: 
Nigeria, Guinea Bissau, Namibia, Gabon, Congo, mid Atlantic (St. Helena).

East Africa:
Tanzania, Somalia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Ethiopia.

South East Asia: 
Fiji, Papua New Guinea, China, Indonesia (Sumatra, Java, Borneo, W. Irian Jaya), Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Guam, Tonga.

Middle East and surrounding areas: 
Egypt, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E., Kuwait, Pakistan, Yemen, Oman, Iraq, Qatar, Israel, India, Iran, Syria, Jordan.

Australasia: 
New Zealand, Australia.

The collection is available for study by all interested parties, subject to some restriction and has been utilised previously as a source for a diverse range of academic and commercial research as well as student projects.

Please e-mail BP-Collection@nhm.ac.uk for details and additional information.