Enhanced Seismic Imaging of Permian and Intra-Carboniferous Sections to Define the Dinantian Play Fairway - UK North Sea

In Autumn 2013 the first gas production from the Breagh Field heralded the coming of age of the Dinantian (Early Carboniferous) play on the northern margins of the Southern Gas Basin and threw down the gauntlet to explorers to chase this new play into open acreage within this mature and infrastructure-rich basin.

In 2013 a dense 2D seismic programme was acquired to define the Dinantian play fairway that extends over a large swath of open acreage. Innovative seismic processing techniques resulted in high quality seismic imaging allowing for the first time both intra-Carboniferous and pre- Permian unconformity potential to be mapped with confidence, at the same time high-grading the prospectivity of these plays previously unimaged on poor legacy seismic and providing a new tool for explorers to gain a detailed regional understanding of this new play.

With over 750 BCF of resources discovered to date in this play-fairway, the “Yet To Find” based on Spectrum’s preliminary structure mapping of the new dataset is over 1TCF. A yet unquantified Triassic prospectivity is a secondary target. The identified potential dwarfs that of the established Carboniferous and Permian plays to the south.