OGA awards two UK offshore exploration contracts

Aug. 7, 2018
The Oil and Gas Authority has awarded new contracts supported by government funding for programs to stimulate exploration activity on the UK continental shelf.

Offshore staff

ABERDEEN, UK – The Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) has awarded new contracts supported by government funding for programs to stimulate exploration activity on the UK continental shelf (UKCS).

The awards, which followed a competitive tendering process during 1Q 2018, are as follows:

1. A contract to fund the first year of a four-year UKCS petroleum systems project, to be performed by a consortium of Lloyd’s Register and IGI. The two companies will compile a comprehensive database of legacy geochemical data acquired across the UKCS over the past five decades.

This will include sample information and analysis from the legacy well sampling databases currently managed by theBritish Geological Survey on behalf of the OGA.

On completion, the resultant geochemical and supporting geological databases will be made available to the industry and academic communities.

2. Ikon Science was awarded a contract to evaluate the rock physics and seismic amplitude responses of the underexplored Jurassic and Triassic plays in the UK central North Sea and East Shetland basin areas.

Results will be shared with the exploration community ahead of the 32nd Mature Licensing Round and, if successful, the OGA plans to extend the findings to promote unlicensed opportunities in the UKCS prospect inventory where the concept could be applied.

In addition, the OGA is working with Agile Scientific to provide free geo-computing training courses to help subsurface teams working on UK licenses develop data science skills to achieve improved insights from subsurface data throughout the lifecycle of an asset.

These courses will be staged in Aberdeen and London during the current quarter.

Another initiative involves the OGA working with Agile Scientific to host two machine-learning and subsurface events in the same two cities during November, the London event being run in collaboration with PETEX 2018 at Olympia.

Jo Bagguley, Principal Regional Geologist for the OGA, said: “Products resulting from the contracts will make significant additional contributions to the seismic, well and map-related data packs already released by the OGA.”

08/07/2018