PGS has acquired 2D multiclient seismic data in the western and southern waters offshore Greece for the country’s Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change.

The first fast-track datasets are now available, said the contractor, with the seismic data including marine gravity and magnetic data. According to PGS, the area has been overlooked until recently, but “given the excitement and promise of other Mediterranean plays, the offshore area that is the subject of the upcoming licensing round shows great potential”.

The objectives of the acquisition program, it added, are to improve understanding of regional structure and depositional basins, and identify petroleum systems in advance of the licence round, scheduled for mid-2014. The programme comprised 12,500 km of new data acquisition using GeoStreamer GS™. Data available also includes 6,000 line km vintage data reprocessing that will be combined into a regional interpretation.

In addition to some long offset and long record length lines that extend out onto the abyssal plain, the main focus of the programme is on three areas. The northern area is a grid of lines in the Ionian Sea over the Pre-Apulian zone. These are analogous to the productive fractured carbonate reservoirs of the central Adriatic to the north offshore Italy and Albania. To the south, there is a loose grid of lines around the Katakolon discovery. This area is in the Ionian zone that is analogous to the onshore Albanian oilfields. South of Crete the grid of lines will among others reveal the Neogene accretionary wedge that forms the Mediterranean ridge and the extent, thickness and continuity of the Messinian evaporate coverage.

Offshore