ARCTICSPAN

With an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil and 1/3 of the world's undiscovered gas reserves, the Arctic is heating up for oil & gas exploration. According to the most recent USGS report, approximately 25% of the world's remaining reserves likely reside in the Arctic. To better define the region's potential, E&P operators need an improved understanding of deepwater petroleum systems of the US Chukchi, the Canadian Beaufort, and the East Greenland Rift Basins. ION's ArcticSPAN multi-client data program was developed to give geoscientists a basin-level tool for interpreting new petroleum systems in the offshore Arctic region, which has been largely unexplored by oil & gas companies since the 1980s.

ION's GX Technology subsidiary (GXT) designed ArcticSPAN with active participation from government agencies and regional experts, with the goal to improve our understanding of the regional geology and less explored basins of the Arctic. The unique acquisition combines advanced technology with long offsets of up to 9,000 m, long record lengths of 18 seconds, and a specially designed seismic source to deliver more energy deeper into the crust to illuminate the basin. In addition, the data is processed and interpreted using the latest prestack time and prestack depth migration techniques and is seamlessly integrated with existing well data to provide the most comprehensive understanding of the structural and tectonic features of the basins.

To date, ArcticSPAN is comprised of three large-scale programs covering the Beaufort-MacKenzie, Banks Island, Chukchi, and East Greenland Rift Basins adding over 24,500 km of deeply imaged seismic data to our multi-client data library.

The Beaufort program was designed to deliver an accurate understanding of the geologic setting of the MacKenzie Delta, Beaufort Passive and the Banks Island Basin area, a section where deepwater undiscovered resources are currently estimated at 14.5 billion BOE and 86.6 trillion cf of gas. The program consists of 16,250 km of deeply imaged regional data that has fundamentally changed the understanding of the production potential of the Beaufort-MacKenzie and Banks Island basins, and has sparked a new round of exploration in the region.

The Chukchi program was designed to deliver insight into the regional framework of the Chukchi and north Chukchi Basins, an area with an estimated 29 billion BOE of recoverable reserves. By tying into the five critical wells in the Chukchi Basin, the program is able to better define the resource potential of the region's petroleum systems from the Barrow Arch in the east to the Russian border in the west. Utilizing an image-driven approach, ION's GX Technology group has designed and acquired 3,000 km of basin-scale seismic data that offers new insights and play concepts of what is anticipated to be a prolific region.

Our most recent addition to the ArcticSPAN program is the Northeast Greenland acquisition which covers the south Danmarkshavn Basin, Thetis Basin, and the northern section of the northeast Greenland Volcanic Province. This is the first program that utilized ION's Intelligent Acquisition [IA] marine technology to image under the polar ice in what is a notoriously difficult area for towed streamer operations. The program encompasses approximately 5,300 km of multi-client data in an area characterized with reserve estimates of 8.5 billion BOE, 80.4 trillion cf of gas, and 8.5 bb of natural gas liquids.

Key program components include:

• Delivers insight into the geology of the Canadian Beaufort Sea, the US Chukchi Sea, and the northeast coast of Greenland
• Approximately 24,500 km of deeply imaged 2D multi-client seismic data
• Transects key geological features to place them in a basin-wide context
• Applies technical specifications of acquisition and data processing to optimize event continuity and imaging of deep objectives
• PreSTM, PreSDM, gravity & magnetic data and interpretation reports available