In 2015, the Oil and Gas Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador, in collaboration with C-CORE, undertook the first iteration of a metocean and ice climatology study and database for the offshore Newfoundland and Labrador region. Data were initially summarized for 391 study area subsections or “grid cells.” The study was updated in 2017 and 2021–2022 and expanded to 575 grid cells. This paper summarizes the key results from the most recent 2021–2022 study. The main aim of the study is to provide the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and accurate database regarding the meteorological, oceanographic, and ice conditions in the study area.
Since 2011, the Oil and Gas Corporation of Newfoundland and Labrador (Oilco, formerly Nalcor Energy Oil and Gas) along with partners Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) and TGS Geophysical have embarked on a multiyear regional two-dimensional (2D) seismic program offshore Newfoundland and Labrador (NL). More than 180,000 line kilometers of 2D broadband seismic have been acquired by 2022 as well as nine three-dimensional (3D) surveys covering over 60,000 square kilometers of frontier basins. The seismic data collected have led to some major scientific advancements of the regional geology, such as the newly defined Chidley, Holton, Henley, and Hawke sedimentary basins off the Labrador coast (Carter et al., 2013), and a Lower Tertiary play trend (Wright et al., 2016), which was imaged on the 2015 multiclient 3D seismic survey.
