OGA awards contracts to attract further exploration on UKCS

UK’s regulator Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) has awarded new contracts through Government funding, to continue to stimulate exploration activity on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS).

OGA said on Tuesday that the awards were made after a tendering process during Q1 2018, as part of the Treasury’s £5 million ($6.5 million) granted to the OGA for exploration.

According to the regulator, this enables the projects to begin as soon as possible and fulfill OGA’s commitment to provide the industry with high-quality data and reports.

A contract to fund the first year of a four-year UKCS Petroleum Systems Project was awarded to a consortium comprising Lloyd’s Register and IGI, who will compile a comprehensive database of legacy geochemical data acquired across the UKCS over the past five decades.

This database will include the provision of sample information and analysis from the legacy well sampling databases currently curated by the British Geological Survey (BGS) on behalf of the OGA.

On completion, the geochemical and supporting geological databases resulting from both these contracts will be made available to industry and academic communities.

OGA awarded an additional contract to Ikon Science to evaluate the rock physics and seismic amplitude responses of the underexplored Jurassic and Triassic plays of the Central North Sea and East Shetland Basin areas.

These findings will be shared with the wider exploration community ahead of the 32nd Mature Licensing Round and, if successful, used by the OGA to promote unlicensed opportunities in the UKCS prospect inventory where the concept can be applied.

Agile Scientific

OGA is also working with Agile Scientific on two separate education programs. The first is to provide free geo-computing training courses aimed at providing subsurface practitioners working on UK licenses the opportunity to gain key data science skills, which can be applied to unlock more value and insights from subsurface data throughout the lifecycle of an asset.

These courses will take place in both Aberdeen and London during Q3 2018, and initial indications show a very high demand for places.

Agile will also host two machine-learning boot camps and subsurface hackathons, in Aberdeen and London during November, with the London event being run in collaboration with PETEX 2018 at Olympia.

Jo Bagguley, principal regional geologist at OGA, said: “The award of this diverse set of contracts continues to demonstrate the OGA’s commitment to reviving exploration activity in the UKCS. Products resulting from the contracts will make significant additional contributions to the seismic, well and map-related data packs already released by the OGA.”