Geoscience data company, Searcher Seismic, has applied for authorization to continue its planned 3D seismic survey offshore South African in search of oil following local opposition and the temporary discontinuation of offshore seismic activity by South Africa’s Western Cape High Court.
On July 13, the company issued an application for a new reconnaissance permit, with the notice inviting affected parties to participate in the environmental authorization application process. Searcher Seismic appointed environmental consulting company, Environmental Impact Management Services, to assist with the authorization, which will include public consultation.
According to the company’s application, the survey will be conducted in waters 256km offshore Saint Helena Bay in South Africa’s Western Cape Province, to 220km offshore Hondeklip Bay, a coastal village in the country’s Northern Cape Province, encompassing an area of approximately 30,000km2, which includes the Northern Cape Ultra Deep License Area and various petroleum license blocks. Pending approval, the seismic shoot is expected for the first quarter of 2023 and will last approximately 217 days.
Working in collaboration with oil and gas exploration management firm, the Petroleum Agency of South Africa, Searcher Seismic has released a multi-client 2D and 3D seismic dataset covering the Outeniqua Basin complex offshore South Africa, as well as its Bredasdorp, Infanta, Pletmos, Gamtoos, Algoa and Southern Outeniqua sub-basins, with the survey currently standing at approximately 110,000km in 2D and 15,000km2 in 3D seismic data.
Providing high-quality exploration data to global exploration, production and mining companies, Searcher Seismic’s 2D and 3D data library features basin modeling, isopach mapping and play fairway building, facilitating the investigation of the distribution of plays and traps in South African waters, models that are suitable for preliminary exploration analysis.
Featuring the company’s proprietary post-stack preprocessing method used to rectify navigation, metadata, amplitude, phase, and time, Searcher Seismic’s database is primed for any interpretation software and is available on its on-demand web-portal, sAIsmic, offering instant access to explorers.
The return of Searcher Seismic to South Africa comes at a time when the country is looking at ramping up exploration and production across the oil and gas sector, citing both resources as key solutions to mitigate load shedding and address the country’s ongoing energy crisis.
