UK Oil and Gas Authority Launches UKCS Competition

The UK Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) has launched a competition to encourage scientific and engineering innovation in a bid to stimulate oil and gas exploration on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS).

The OGA hopes the competition will significantly increase the understanding of the "frontier areas" of Rockall Basin and Mid North Sea High ahead of the 29th Seaward Licensing Round later this year, it said. 

Launched on March 7, the competition invites geoscientists and engineers to "develop innovative interpretations and products potentially using the data acquired during last year’s successful £20 million Government-funded seismic surveys of the Rockall Basin and Mid North Sea High (MNSH) areas."

Applicants will be given access to a data package consisting of around 40,000 km of new and reprocessed legacy seismic data as well as gravity, magnetic and well data.

The competition has funds of £500,000 to award. Initially, successful applicants will be awarded up to £30,000 in seed funding to carry out their initial analysis. After that, two winning candidates may be further awarded around £100,000 to develop their work into a final product for use by the OGA.

"New exploration is [the UK's] lifeblood and we funded these seismic studies to support the industry in exploring and unlocking that potential," Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom said on March 7. "This competition encourages companies to come up with new, innovative ways to make the most of this data."

Industry body Oil & Gas UK also welcomed the launch of the competition on March 7. Its operations director Oonagh Werngren said: "This Exploration Licence competition provides the industry with a valuable opportunity to both develop new perspectives on key areas of the UK Continental Shelf and re-evaluate how we can use data to more efficiently to unlock the remaining exploration targets." 

Erica Mills