12,000 kms of seismic data for India's largest-ever licensing round
21-09-2007 04:00
With India's Director General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) expected to announce the start of India's largest-ever exploration licensing round - NELP VII Licensing Round -sometime in the next few months, GGS-Spectrum has commenced a seismic reprocessing project on behalf of DGH to re-process up to 12,000 line kilometres of 2D seismic data offshore the west coast of India.
The reprocessed data covers blocks which are to be included in the forthcoming licensing round. The bid round is expected to open sometime in late 2007 and close mid 2008. NELP VII will make available onshore and offshore blocks covering more than 300,000 square kilometres for license, including India's entire west coast.
The Government of India hopes to make the NELP VII particularly attractive to larger overseas companies in order to unlock hydrocarbons in India's relatively un-explored regions. Many oil majors have traditionally stayed away from India's licensing rounds, however, despite their lack of activity in the region, the majors have revised their opinions and now consider offshore India as offering considerable hydrocarbon reserve potential.
In contrast to the deepwater area off the East Coast of India, the Deep Western offshore is very much an unexplored area. GGS-Spectrum's reprocessing project on behalf of India's DGH will provide a regional coverage of the NELP VII frontier area, running from Kerla-Konkan and Laccadive Basins in the south, northwards to the Laxmi Depression and Ridge which lie west of the petroliferous Bombay High area.
Scientific studies of the offshore area indicate a rifted terrain of late Cretaceous age onwards, forming a series of rotated horsts and grabens (Palakshi et al, AAPG Bulletin 2000) with associated source and reservoir rocks. Plays in this deep water area are expected to include submarine fans and turbidite deposits of Paleocene to Miocene age, carbonate reefs of Eocene to Miocene age and rotated horsts and grabens of Paleocene and older age.
GGS-Spectrum's seismic data reprocessing utilises a combination of bespoke software and proprietary techniques, including multiple attenuation techniques, pre stack time migration and pre-stack depth migration to generate the highest quality data set. The results of the seismic reprocessing, particularly the PSDM results, should help in revealing the exploration potential of the NELP VII area. GGS-Spectrum will complete test processing shortly and the full processing of the 12,000 line kms by the end of 2007.This gives oil companies plenty of time to undertake technical evaluation of the acreage on offer in NELP VII.
