Summary stratigraphy highlighting the aerial extent of the EARS BasinMap (illustration: CGG GeoConsulting)

CGG GeoConsulting’s NPA Satellite Mapping group has launched the multi-client EARS BasinMap for exploration de-risking across the vast region of East Africa, from regional-to-prospect or play scale. The EARS BasinMap is part of a new NPA Map product suite that offers world-leading satellite imagery-based geological mapping at different scales on either a proprietary or multi-client basis through PlateMap, BasinMap, BlockMap and FieldMap products.

The EARS BasinMap provides an entirely new 1:200,000 scale geological map and database of the East African Rift System and integrates structural history, drainage analysis and sediment provenance. Compiled by expert interpretation of satellite optical imagery and topographic data (the latest Landsat 8 OLI and SRTM 1 DEM data), the database extends across approximately 2.5 million km² of East Africa taking in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi and parts of Ethiopia, Mozambique, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. New Ventures & Exploration teams can use the EARS BasinMap for regional screening to rapidly gauge and understand the structural dynamics of on-going rifting and predict the location of favourable sediment sequences with high reservoir potential.

Across the under- and unexplored rift basins, where exploration data quality and quantity are limited, the EARS BasinMap provides a regional analysis of the timing and history of regional fault movement, uplift and erosion, which control sedimentation and accommodation space within the basins. The style and geometry of the rift-related structures in the region have an inherited relationship with the mapped basement trends, and control both compartmentalisation of the rift basins and the drainage systems. The combined elevation data and map data provide valuable insight on geological evolution, source-to sink depositional systems and reservoir quality. When coupled with Seep Explorer (CGG’s on- and offshore seeps database) and Tellus (CGG Robertson’s strategic new ventures tool), structural, reservoir and source risk can be even further reduced in this developing hydrocarbon province.

Richard Burren, Director of CGG GeoConsulting’s NPA Satellite Mapping, says, “Our new offering of scaled geological products across the Map family expands our impressive range of multi-client onshore geological mapping studies. The latest member, EARS BasinMap, is the world’s first contiguous structural history, drainage and sediment provenance database for the East African Rift System and promises to significantly help our clients unlock the exploration potential of the region. It provides our clients with the industry’s only interactive, queryable 1:200,000 scale geological map for East Africa, a region of the world that our team of expert structural geologists knows extremely well, after over a decade of mapping experience.”

Tags: CGG GeoConsulting