The Carbonate Reservoir Characterization Research Laboratory (RCRL) is an industrial research consortium run by the Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin. The RCRL's mission is to use outcrop and subsurface geologic and petrophysical data from carbonate reservoir strata as the basis for developing new and integrated methodologies for better understanding and describing the 3D reservoir environment.

The RCRL program has run continuously since 1987 and has produced numerous outside and BEG publications on carbonate reservoir characterization, sequence stratigraphy, petrophysics, geostatistics, and petroleum engineering, including the 1994 and 1995 AAPG Wallace Pratt awards for best publication in the Bulletin for that year. We provide research results to sponsor companies in the form of annual review meetings, CD's of review presentations, RCRL Web site, preprints of publications, short courses on geologic and engineering aspects of our research, and through a mentoring program working hands on with industry staff and data sets. Click here for selected pulications.

The RCRL has maintained a membership of between 14 and 19 companies per year. The sponsorship has strong interests in Permian Basin, and Middle Eastern carbonate reservoirs. This enrollment, supplemented by government grants, provides support for 4–7 professional staff and varying numbers of graduate student research assistants, plus strong computer and graphics support. All staff have extensive industry experience or have worked closely with industry and are well aware of the challenges and questions facing development geoscientists and engineers. We are also very proud of our graduate student staff that includes several award-winning students, many of whom are now working in the industry.

Each year we combine industry input with our own ongoing research plans to develop a set of key geologic and engineering research topics. Our plans for 2006 are presented in " Research Goals."