New Potential in a Mature Petroleum Basin - Pannonian Basin of Northern Croatia

Abstract

The Pannonian Basin of Northern Croatia is regarded as a mature petroleum province with a long exploration and production history extending back to the late 19th Century, with more than 1.2 billion BOE discovered to date (Velic et al., 2012). However, most of the oil and gas was discovered by INA and its precursors, prior to the availability of modern exploration methodologies, and our analysis, presented here, suggest that the basins provide significant opportunities for new discoveries and re-appraisal, an opportunity encouraged by onshore licencing rounds in 2014 and 2018. We present an integrated analysis of field outcrop, subsurface data and a wealth of public domain information that have been leveraged using play fairway-based techniques to evaluate not only the remaining conventional potential across the basin, but also the potential in tight sands and continuous resource plays. We also show how the integrated techniques can be utilised in other basins around the world to rapidly identify sweet-spots and high-grade areas for future exploration.