According to the company, which since 2012 has conducted more than 8,800 line km of 2D data in the Barents Sea and Kara Sea, the Kara Plate has strong resemblance with the Timan-Pechora Plate, one of the leading oil producing regions in Russia.
“Even at this early stage of exploration maturity, it is obvious that the area is quite promising relative to other prospects on the Russian Arctic Shelf and there are strong indications of oil dominance in hydrocarbon presence”, the company informs in a press release.
PGS has been conducting the studies with the Russian vessel “Akademik Lazarev”, a vessel owned by the Murmansk-based Sevmorneftegeofizika. The first datasets from the area are now available to clients.
The Kara Plate has, until recently, remained one of the least explored regions of the Barents-Kara Shelf. Geophysical investigations began during the 1970s and the first offshore drilling started in the early 1980s, in this area which is ice-bound for the majority of the year, PGS informs.
The Kara Sea is the main area of focus in the comprehensive cooperation between Rosneft and partner ExxonMobil. As previously reported, the agreement signed in late 2011 includes the three East Prinovozemelsky License Blocks, an area covering 126,000 square kilometers.
The three East Prinovozemelsky blocks are located to the east of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. Water depths in the area range between 40-350 meters and the icy period covers up to 300 days of the year.
