diff --git a/workflow/scripts/extractRefData.py b/workflow/scripts/extractRefData.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..7c9dfa9d2a67c433e40fc015087dac9a2dfc1164
--- /dev/null
+++ b/workflow/scripts/extractRefData.py
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python3
+
+import argparse
+import pandas as pd
+import warnings
+warnings.simplefilter(action='ignore', category=FutureWarning)
+
+def main():
+    refQuery=pd.read_json("refQuery.json")
+    if refQuery["File_URL"].count() == 1:
+       print(refQuery["File_URL"].values[0])
+    else:
+        raise Exception("Multple references found: \n%s" %
+            refQuery["RID"])
+
+if __name__ == '__main__':
+    main()