The Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) has awarded four new contracts worth about US1.25 million (£1 million) to supply more than 10,000km of reprocessed proprietary 2D seismic data of the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) as part of the UK Government funded seismic acquisition program.
The contracts were awarded to to Shearwater GeoServices, Geokinetics, DMT Petrologic and Quality Seismic.
The reprocessed legacy seismic is in the Anglo-Paris basin offshore, the Wessex and Weald Basins onshore, the South West Approaches (including deep imaging data from the British Institutes Reflection Profiling Syndicate - BIRPS), the Solway Firth, the Unst Basin and the East Shetland Platform.
It is scheduled to be openly released to the industry in 2017 alongside the recently acquired new seismic, gravity and magnetics data of South West Britain and East Shetland Platform.
Dr Nick Richardson, OGA Exploration and New Ventures Manager, said: “This combined seismic dataset, covers an offshore area equivalent to twice the United Kingdom’s landmass (approximately 500,000sq km) and provides an unprecedented dataset to stimulate exploration activity. These data have the potential to unlock potential in areas that have not been explored for decades and will support the evaluation of acreage to be made available in future OGA licensing rounds.”
Over the last two years, the UK Government has provided £40 million of funding for seismic acquisition programs, which the OGA has been using to build a regional database of seismic data in under-explored areas of the UKCS.
This has included two new seismic campaigns covering the Mid North Sea High and the Rockall Basin in 2015/16 and the East Shetland Platform and South West Britain in 2016/17.
The OGA has also announced several programs of legacy seismic reprocessing to extend and complement the coverage to other areas including the Mid North Sea High (2015/16), the Rockall Basin and West of Britain (2015/16) and in 2016/17, Southwest Approaches, Northern Approaches and Bristol Channel, Cardigan Bay and Celtic Sea, Morecambe Bay and East Irish Sea, the East Shetland Platform and North Western Britain including the Minches and the Firth of Clyde.
The OGA has also recently announced two Invitations to Tender for geotechnical studies in the East Shetland Platform and South West Approaches. These tenders mark next phase of the 21st Century Exploration Road Map. The closing date is 28 November.