Nalcor delivers first Newfoundland and Labrador metocean findings

June 19, 2015
Nalcor Energy Oil & Gas has issued results of the first regional metocean study offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.

Offshore staff

ST JOHN’s, CanadaNalcor Energy Oil & Gas has issued results of the first regional metocean study offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.

This was designed to improve understand of weather and ice conditions in the area in order to reduce exploration risk and uncertainty, ahead of this November’s first offshore license round for the two provinces.

Nalcor conducted the study in partnership with C-CORE, a Canadian research and development center that specializes in environments that include ice-prone oceans.

The program covered winds, waves, currents, fog, vessel icing, pack ice, icebergs and ice islands and the influence of environmental changes on these conditions. It also produced a comparison with other globally comparable frontier oil and gas regions such as the North Sea, Barents Sea, and west Greenland.

The study covered the entire Labrador Sea and Northern Grand Banks, Flemish Pass, and Flemish Cap areas. The study area is divided into 391 grid cells with each cell covering on average 3,760 sq km (1,452 sq mi), in total around 1.5 million sq km (579,000 sq mi).

Data summaries for met ocean parameters are available for each cell and for the region.

To help facilitate use of the data, Nalcor has released an interactive, map-based system, called the Nalcor Exploration Strategy System or NESS. The company’s exploration team developed NESS in 2013 in partnership with ICI Solutions to help capture data and scientific insights from the work the team is undertaking in the frontier regions offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.

In addition, NESS provides geographic and geophysical data for these regions that includes sedimentary basins, offshore boundaries, well data, and licenses.

Murray Brown, vice president Oil and Gas C-CORE, said. “It captures data that would not otherwise be easily available to the industry and makes it available in a user-friendly and accessible manner.”

06/19/2015