Seminar on sub-basalt exploration

This will be one of the general topics at a seminar the Norwegian Offshore Directorate is 
organising on 15 October. At this seminar, representatives from operators, suppliers, 
academia and the authorities will discuss options and issues linked to sub-basalt 
exploration. The target group for this event is oil and gas companies that are active on 
the NCS, as well as the supplier industry.

If you have expertise within sub-basalt exploration, and have something you'd like 
to present at the seminar, we'd love to hear from you!

A little background: Over geological time, the areas at the far west of the Vøring Basin in 
the Norwegian Sea have been affected by multiple phases of rifting and eventually 
volcanism. This was caused by the Atlantic Ocean spreading between Norway and 
Greenland. The result is intermittent thick basalt sequences located like a blanket over 
the older sedimentary deposits.

Such geological factors make it more complicated to explore for prospective areas for oil 
and gas accumulations in the subsurface. The basalts disturb the seismic imaging of the 
sedimentary deposits below if conventional "streamer" seismic is used.

Since the sub-basalt areas on the NCS were opened in 1980, only a handful of 
production licences have had sub-basalt prospectivity as an exploration target. As of 
today, no wildcat wells have been drilled through the basalt and into underlying layers.

The sub-basalt areas are therefore considered to be one of the remaining frontier areas 
for oil and gas exploration, and the areas may hold substantial undiscovered resources. 
An established geological and tectonic framework exists, and the Mesozoic plays from 
the rest of the Norwegian Sea are also presumably found here.

Challenges with seismic imaging and limited data coverage result in significant 
uncertainty about the geology in the area. This particularly applies for the geometry of
structures, reservoirs, sealing/storage, and source/migration, because we know very 
little about the sub-basalt areas.

Improvements within seismic technology, such as seabed seismic and full waveform 
inversion, can provide opportunities for better imaging under the basalt. Other 
technologies could also help us understand sub-basalt geology. For instance, the 
Norwegian Offshore Directorate and the company EMGS have conducted studies this 
year to examine how the newest electromagnetic data processing technology can help 
us better understand the subsurface in these areas.

The agenda for the seminar, which will be held at the Norwegian Offshore 
Directorate in Stavanger, will be published in early autumn.