OGA Hands Out £1 for New UKCS Seismic Data Project

The Oil and Gas Authority UK (OGA) has awarded four new contracts worth approximately £1 million to Shearwater GeoServices, Geokinetics, DMT Petrologic and Quality Seismic to supply more than 10,000 kilometres of reprocessed proprietary 2D seismic data of the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) as part of the UK Government funded seismic acquisition programme.

This reprocessed legacy seismic is located 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 500,000 square kilometers) and provides an unprecedented dataset to stimulate exploration activity. These data have the potential to unlock areas that have not been explored for decades and will support the evaluation of acreage to be made available in future OGA licensing rounds.”