The eagerly awaited final set of geological maps from the OGA’s UKCS Regional Geological Maps project have been released.

The maps produced by Lloyd’s Register, mark the culmination of a three-year project, which has delivered a set of high quality digital, updateable, regional geological maps and associated databases for all the UK’s offshore basins - delivering a key action identified in the Wood Review.

The final geographic series covers the West of Shetlands, Rockall Trough, Irish Sea and Cardigan Bay. In addition, a single merged set of maps and databases for the whole of the UKCS is now available, combining each of the individual geographic areas, published on a rolling basis throughout the duration of the project.

Although the UKCS Regional Geological Maps project data is public domain data, the project has benefited from several additional third-party data sources, used to help inform the final maps and/or derive the interpreted products. These include UK data from CGG, TGS, PGS and the BGS (British Geological Survey) plus cross-border data from the PAD (Petroleum Affairs Division, Ireland), TNO (Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research) and Jardfeingi (Faroese Geological Survey).

The OGA project has also benefited from collaboration with research teams from Heriot-Watt University, the University of Aberdeen and Durham University who undertook OGA-funded Frontier Basin Research post-doctoral projects - based around the OGA’s 2D Government seismic data - in the frontier areas of the Mid North Sea High, Rockall Trough and SW Approaches.

“Our involvement with the UKCS Regional Geological Mapping project over the last three years has been invaluable, both from a data perspective and in relation to gaining a better understanding of many areas of the UKCS” said Jo Bagguley, OGA’s Principal Regional Geologist.

Henk Kombrink, Senior Geologist and Lloyd’s Register Project Manager, said “Producing a set of consistent geological maps and datasets for the entire UKCS over three years was a big challenge at the start, but thanks to the high level of collaboration with both the OGA and many third parties, the team at Lloyd’s Register were able to successfully deliver the project”.

The full set of maps and data included in this release can be downloaded using the links below. The products are available in both ArcGIS and Open Source formats.

Links to downloads:

West of Shetlands & Rockall Trough

 East Irish Sea & Cardigan Bay

UKCS Merged Maps