Working with LAS Data

I have an archive of data and I’d like a summary in HTML

There is a command line tool tdlastohtml (a wrapper around TotalDepth.LAS.LASToHtml) which can generate an HTML summary of a body of LAS files. There is a tutorial here: Summarise LAS Files in HTML with tdlastohtml

I have an archive of LAS data and I want to plot it

There is a generalised well log plotting command line tool tdplotlogs that supports LAS described here: Plotting Well Logs with tdplotlogs (references TotalDepth.PlotLogs).

LAS files do not contain an internal plot specification. For files needing an external plot specification there is some background information on plotting in a technical note here Wireline Files With External Plot Data.

Getting the Frame Data as a numpy Array

TotalDepth’s LAS represents the channel data as Numpy arrays. There is a tutorial here on writing code that allows you to access the Numpy channel data directly: Reading a LAS File Log Data

I have some troublesome LAS files

There are several problem areas for LAS files:

• The LAS specification is fairly weak and provides a lot of uncertainty. So LAS files from some producers are not readable by some other LAS consumers.
• LAS is a ‘human readable’ format, unfortunately that means it is a human writable format as well. This often means that LAS files can be mangled by well meaning, but mistaken intervention.
• Some LAS file archives have serious errors such as swapping value and description fields. These are not easily fixable by a rule based system.

The advantage, of course, with LAS files is that the can be hacked around with a simple text editor at will. This will often fix small local problems.

Feel free to contact the author for advice.