Searcher Seismic in airborne geophysical survey off PNG

Searcher Seismic, an independent seismic data acquisition company, has announced a regional multi-client airborne gravity, gravity-gradiometry, and magnetics survey over Gulf of Papua near-shore areas.

Searcher Seismic said on Monday that the survey, named Roho, covers approximately 60,700 square kilometers along the southern coast of Papua New Guinea.

The survey follows several marine seismic and geochemical projects recently completed by Searcher aimed at assessing the hydrocarbon potential of the Gulf of Papua and adjacent Coral Sea areas, offshore PNG.

Most recently, Searcher Seismic completed the Solomon Sea broadband 2D seismic survey off Papua New Guinea, comprising of around 3,600 kilometers which span the underexplored Cape Vogel and Bougainville Basins as well as the unexplored New Ireland Basin.

Rachel Masters, global sales manager for Searcher Seismic, said: “PNG has become an area of increasing industry interest in recent years and successful exploration and development projects onshore have ignited interest in the potential prospectivity offshore, which is largely unexplored.

“Much of the area covered by the survey will comprise shallow water transition zone environments where seismic operations are difficult and expensive.”

“The Roho survey is designed to bridge the gap between the onshore areas of PNG where many wells have been drilled, providing good geological control points, and the offshore regions in the Gulf of Papua and Coral Sea, where a substantial database of new, high quality seismic data is now available, but well data is sparse or absent altogether,” the company added.

Mobilization is currently underway, and the acquisition will begin in late November 2017. The survey is being acquired by CGG Multi-Physics, using a Basler BT-67 twin turbine fixed wing aircraft.

Final data will be available in early 2018, and a regional interpretation of the new data will be completed by June 2018.

Roho survey area marked with red