Broadband Data Starts to Unlock the Secrets to Finding Hydrocarbons in the Banda Arc

The Banda Arc is of great interest to petroleum explorers because of abundant onshore and offshore oil and gas seeps and similarities with geologically contiguous Mesozoic and Cenozoic successions in Australia where numerous petroleum systems exist and have been exploited (the Mesozoic basins are collectively termed the “North West Shelf”). Exploration of the offshore Banda Arc has previously been limited because of water depths, remoteness and seismic imaging problems associated with a zone of deformation occurring between the fore-deeps and the Banda Sea. In cooperation with the Indonesian Directorate General of Oil and Gas (Migas) and the Timor Leste National Petroleum Authority (ANP), CGG has acquired four phases of multi-client seismic data around the Banda Arc; collectively, these surveys are known as the BandaSeis Project. The data has been acquired with CGG BroadSeis broadband technologies and processed in depth: the regional Phase III data is currently being processed and will not be discussed in this article.