OGA awards contracts for second UK seismic campaign

By Tom Eddershaw - July 19, 2016.

The UK’s Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) has awarded contracts for a second UK Government funded £20 million (US$26 million) seismic campaign to promote underexplored areas of the UK continental shelf (UKCS).

PGS and WesternGeco have been awarded the contracts to acquire seismic data from the East Shetland Platform and South West Britain respectively.

The programme is anticipated to collect between 10,000 and 15,000 kilometres (8,000 nautical miles) of new seismic data from under-explored areas.

The acquisition is due to begin in July, subject to receiving the relevant environmental approvals, and will be supplemented by selective reprocessing of legacy seismic datasets.

Acquisition is expected to be completed towards the end of 2016 and released to industry in the second quarter of 2017, mirroring the 2015 seismic programme which saw more than 40,000 line kilometres of new and reprocessed data successfully released to industry earlier this year.