Africa Oil & Gas: NamibiaSPAN™ Seismic Acquisition Complete

ION Geophysical completed the seismic acquisition stage of its NamibiaSPAN™ program, which extends the full length of Namibia’s offshore continental margin.  The acquisition was conducted in cooperation with Chinese seismic firm BGP.

With an estimated 100 billion barrels of oil remaining to be discovered and produced in Africa’s offshore waters, NamibiaSPAN plays a critical role in establishing a contiguous dataset for the full West Africa margin extending from Mossel Bay to the Bight of Benin.NamibiaSPAN comprises over 10,000 km of two-dimensional (2D) multi-client data and represents the newest addition to ION’s BasinSPAN™ library, which encompasses approximately 500,000 km of 2D basin-scale data in E&P hotspots around the world including NigeriaSPAN™, EquatorSPAN™ and CongoSPAN™ in West Africa.

“Namibia is positioned to help define future exploration and production activity across a wide region that extends beyond our borders,” Immanuel Mulunga, Petroleum Commissioner for Namibia’s Ministry of Mines and Energy, noted. “Our goal is to achieve the fullest understanding of Namibia’s offshore potential, which includes tying our seismic data with that of neighboring basins in order to better comprehend the margin as a whole.”

NamibiaSPAN enhances interpretation of its conjugate margin in the Pelotas Basin offshore Brazil, with conjugate ties extending to Uruguay and Argentina. Using recently acquired BasinSPAN data in South America, geoscientists can deploy conjugate exploration strategies to evaluate rock and sedimentary connections as these regions evolved and separated over time.  Insight into these conjugates is critical to making accurate predictions regarding future oil and gas potential; since 1980, Africa’s proven reserves of natural gas have risen over 140%, due in large part to accurate assessment of conjugate data.

“As clearly illustrated by recent E&P activity and the accelerated pace of drilling, Namibia has become an important exploration province, attracting oil companies worldwide,” Joe Gagliardi, senior VP of ION’s GeoVentures group, commented.  “In conjunction with existing and planned BasinSPAN surveys in adjacent countries, NamibiaSPAN should help lift offshore activity in one of the world’s most important regions for oil and gas production.”

Data processing and imaging is currently underway, with pre-stack time migration (PSTM) data scheduled for availability by July and pre-stack depth migration (PSDM) data available by October.(By Africa Petroleum)