ION Geophysical Corporation has acquired 6,500km of regional seismic data for sponsoring exploration and production clients in the Danmarkshavn basin offshore Northeast Greenland, adding to the 5,300km of data the company acquired there last season.
The Danmarkshavn basin is one of the least explored, most prospective basins in the Arctic region, an area the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates could contain nearly 25% of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas resources.
ION once again deployed its purpose-designed marine streamer technology to acquire data in the presence of ice.
ION said its Intelligent Acquisition [IA] toolkit and Arctic program management expertise enabled the company to acquire data further north and in the presence of heavier ice than had been previously possible, at the same time mitigating HSE risk and reducing cycle time.
The company also said that it has expanded the Arctic operational season to six months, longer than the industry’s traditional Arctic acquisition season of one to two months.
ION Arctic Solutions and Technology director Joe Gagliardi said that this extension to ION’s Greenland regional program was designed to provide a better understanding of high potential petroleum systems including the North Danmarkshavn Salt Basin, the Northeast Greenland Volcanic Province and the Thetis Basin.
"The success of the 2010 expansion serves as further confirmation of the viability and value of our proprietary in-ice Arctic solution," Gagliardi said.
ION’s ArcticSPAN program now offers regional exploration teams more than 40,000km of deeply imaged seismic data in the Arctic region covering the Beaufort-MacKenzie, Banks Island, Chukchi, East Greenland Rift, and Danmarkshavn basins.
ION is a provider of geophysical technology, services and solutions for the global oil and gas industry.