Awards from the round, which is open for six months starting this month, are expected next October.
Recent successes in the Northern MSGBC (Mauritania-Senegal-Gambia-Bissau-Conakry) Basin have increased the industry interest in the relatively under explored region.
Melbourne junior FAR's basin-opening FAN-1 and SNE-1 oil discoveries offshore Senegal in late 2014 shifted its corporate focus to the MSGBC, which has re-emerged as a global exploration hot spot this year.
Frogtech's SEEBASE (Structurally Enhanced view of Economic BASEment) study for play-based exploration helps focus investments in higher cost seismic data by providing a predictive model for basin evolution, highlighting the areas where the occurrence and distribution of petroleum play elements are most likely.
The study includes a basement geology, tectonic reconstructions, basement depth and architecture, and heat flow, providing a geological context in which to place petroleum systems observations.
The Northwest Africa Margin SEEBASE Study and GIS provides a regional structural model and overview of basement evolution of the Northwest Africa Central Atlantic margin.
"Basement terranes play a critical role in basin formation, especially on continental margins where the effect of basement reworking is amplified through multiple tectonic events," the company said yesterday.
"The Northwest African margin was located on the paleo passive margin of Gondwana in the Cambro-Ordovician, and subsequently at the Hercynian-Alleghanian orogenic front in the Carboniferous during Pangaea amalgamation.
"During Pangaea breakup in the Permo-Triassic and Early Jurassic, its basin architecture was shaped by the rifting and diachronous opening of the Tethys and Central Atlantic oceans, which followed the old Hercynian orogenic suture. Structural inheritance therefore played a major role in the evolution of the margin, as basement faults and terrane boundaries were reactivated."
FrogTech said tectonic linkage of the Central Atlantic to the Tethys domain provides important controls on the paleoenvironment of the margin, depositing evaporites which later formed critical hydrocarbon-trapping structures.
"Passive margin development of Northwest Africa was interrupted in the Late Cretaceous, when subduction of the Tethys led to Africa-Europe convergence," the firm said.
"Mesozoic basins on the margin were affected by inversion and salt tectonics. In the Cenozoic, compression from the Betic-Rif Orogeny contemporaneous with extension related to Neotethys slab rollback significantly influenced basement geometry and the thermal regime on the northern African margin."
