Pannonian Basin Ongoing Bid Round - 2nd Onshore Bidding Round for 7 exploration blocks

Croatia has announced the launch of the country’s second onshore licence round. Seven blocks will be available in the licence round, all located in Croatia’s prolific Pannonian basin that has produced over 1.1 billion boe, of which the majority is oil and condensate. Most of the blocks contain undeveloped oil or gas discoveries. Available for the first time will be blocks Sava-06 (SA-06), Sava-07 (SA-07), Sava-11 (SA-11), Sava-12 (SA-12), Northwest Croatia-01 (SZH-01) and Northwest Croatia-05 (SZH-05). Meanwhile Drava-03 (DR-03), that was previously offered in Croatia’s 1st onshore license round and then awarded to Oando, will be available for the second time. The five other blocks from Croatia’s first onshore license round were awarded to Vermilion and INA.

Stratigraphic plays which are frequently observed in seismic data for each basin are all but unexplored and could yield significant results in areas of sand body pinch-out that are common in both the delta front and distal onlap.

Deeper plays also offer future potential with many as yet untested and poorly understood. Lower Miocene coarse clastic reservoirs could be charged (as they are in Hungary) by localised shales formed within graben like depressions.

Fractured basement and Buried hill structures of the poorly explored Mesozoic offer huge amounts of potential but are still very much under-explored and poorly mapped.

Modern exploration into these deeper and often poorly defined play types has been hindered by the quality of the legacy seismic data in the basin, with over 4,000 seismic lines acquired from the early 1970’s to the 1990’s. Data processing techniques and capabilities have developed significantly since that time and Spectrum has reprocessed some 12,000 km of the data using a modern processing suite. Imaging of the data has been greatly uplifted, revealing the potential in deep structures with improved continuity, frequency and amplitude content. The reprocessing has also encompassed a regional static elevation model that enables surveys from a variety of different vintages to tie seamlessly to each other, allowing full and comprehensive interpretation of the data set. This is also complemented by reconditioned and translated key well data set covering the region.

KeyFacts Energy Industry Directory: Croatian Hydrocarbon Agency