West of Shetland broadband 3D seismic: Extending the exploration life of Europe using new seismic technology

The West of Shetlands exploration area lies between the Faroe Islands and the Shetland Islands in the north-east Atlantic (Figure 1). This region represents an area of relative immaturity in terms of North Sea exploration; only 7% of the wells drilled on the United Kingdom Continental Shelf (UKCS) between 1973 and 2012 were in the West of Shetlands region. Significant discoveries in the Faroe-Shetland basin account for 3.5% of those on the UKCS. However, these figures do not reveal the exploration potential of the area as there is thought to be more than 3 billion barrels of oil in the subsurface, both proven and probable (Austin et al., 2014). Hydrocarbon accumulations have been encountered in Lewisian basement as well as in formations of Devono-Carboniferous, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Palaeocene and Eocene age (Figure 2). However, the perceived lack of discoveries could be owing to poor seismic data and so AVO analysis cannot be used for detailed lithology prediction.