Ireland offers Rockall exploration tracts

Ireland's Department of Transport, Energy & Communications has offered 615 full blocks and 35 part blocks for exploration in the Rockall Trough area off western Ireland. The blocks, covering almost 150,000 sq km, are designated frontier acreage. Applications for exploration licenses are required by Mar. 26, 1997, with award of licenses expected later next year. Water depths for the blocks on offer range from more than 2,500 m at the center of the trough to about 500 m on the margins.

April 1, 1996

2 min read

Ireland's Department of Transport, Energy & Communications has offered 615 full blocks and 35 part blocks for exploration in the Rockall Trough area off western Ireland.

The blocks, covering almost 150,000 sq km, are designated frontier acreage. Applications for exploration licenses are required by Mar. 26, 1997, with award of licenses expected later next year.

Water depths for the blocks on offer range from more than 2,500 m at the center of the trough to about 500 m on the margins.

The ministry said Rockall Trough is a large northeast-southwest trending Mesozoic to Cenozoic sedimentary basin lying 100-650 km west of Ireland.

The area is bounded on two sides by shallow platforms-the Erris and Slyne and Porcupine Ridges on the southeast and Rockall Bank on the northwest. Northeast and southeast boundaries of the area are the limits of Ireland's offshore territory.

Robertson Research International Ltd., Llandudno, U.K., is preparing a technical evaluation of the Rockall Trough. Work is to be complete in May. The ministry said the report will be the first comprehensive assessment of the petroleum potential of the trough, based on all available geophysical and geological data.

The study aims to set out a structural and stratigraphic framework for the area, evaluating hydrocarbon plays in terms of reservoir, source, seal, and trapping potential. It will have a data set of nearly 6,000 line-km of seismic data in hard copy and digital format.

Several geophysical contractors have proposed data acquisition in the area under offer.

One of the contractors is Geoventures Ltd., Bedford, U.K., which soon will begin surveying the southeast margin of the Rockall Trough, with a view to selling data to companies by June.

Geoventures chartered the MV Professor Polshkov seismic vessel to begin acquisition of 4,000 line-km of 2D data in mid to late April. Geoventures also plans to conduct a 30,000 km aeromagnetic survey of the area.

Geoventures said the Rockall Trough is very much an unknown area, with only one well drilled to define the trough's structures and a number of wells drilled along its margins (OGJ, June 5, 1995, p. 17).