The deliverables from the first year of the UKCS Petroleum Systems Project are being released in support of the 32nd Licensing Round. This initial year was carried out in collaboration with Lloyd’s Register, IGI and the British Geological Survey (BGS) and has focused primarily on the compilation of a UKCS-wide geochemical database.
The majority of the entries in the database represent legacy geochemical data collated from CDA (now NDR), the core/cuttings accessions database (held by the BGS on behalf of the OGA) and other geochemical data previously released by the NSTA. The database also includes new fluid analyses that have been carried out to fill data gaps. The database contains over 91,000 samples which have been extracted from more than 2700 wells (onshore and offshore) and a consistent stratigraphic framework has been applied to enable the user to be able to query the database according to stratigraphic intervals of interest. As such, this represents the largest publicly available geochemical database ever compiled for the UKCS.
The geochemical database is being made available in p:IGI and Excel format and is provided as a single UKCS database as well as 5 regional reports. Due to the volume of the data provided in the Excel files, the data has been grouped and colour coded for ease of use and the user is encouraged to read the available documentation provided before using the geochemical database. High level interpretation reports are also provided for each region of the UKCS.
In addition to the geochemical database, shallow seismic interpretation has been carried out across the UKCS using a coarse, regional 2D seismic grid. The objective was to identify features on the seismic data that may indicate the presence of hydrocarbons or a working petroleum system. These have been mapped and categorised and are represented within the ArcGIS project. Other deliverables of the project include petrophysical TOC evaluations for potential source intervals in the Devonian and Middle Jurassic and a set of integrated regional depth maps.
As a result of the NSTA getting geochemical data extracted from core/cutting sample data reported to the BGS, the BGS’s accessions database is now fully available in digital format. Information linked to data reported for both offshore and onshore samples can be queried via layers provided by the BGS as part of their Onshore and Offshore Geoindex pages:
The geochemical database produced as part of the UKCS Petroleum Systems Project is made available under the terms of the OGA’s User Licence Agreement. All other deliverables are released under the OGA Licence (OGAL), the terms of which can be found in the documentation included with this delivery.
