Two-thirds of geoscience professionals say the current geopolitical environment has increased the importance of accessing legacy geological and geophysical (G&G) data, with more than 40% describing it as a strategic priority. The findings come from Ovation Data’s 2026 poll of geoscience professionals, where one respondent put it: “Legacy data is increasingly becoming a strategic exploration asset, not just an archival issue, with major impact on competitiveness and decision-making.”
The International Energy Agency reports that nearly 90% of upstream oil and gas investment is now simply used to offset declining output from existing fields. With Strait of Hormuz disruption sharpening the focus on supply security, and exploration capital diversifying toward Africa, Latin America (and re-entry markets like Libya) the quality and accessibility of legacy subsurface data have never mattered more.
Capital is back, but selectively
Upstream oil and gas capital expenditure reached $603 billion in 2024, the highest level since 2014, according to the International Energy Forum and S&P Global Commodity Insights. The 2025 Banking on Climate Chaos report, summarized by Ran, notes that banks collectively directed $869 billion into fossil fuel financing in 2024, a sharp increase from 2023.
But the return of capital does not always mean a return to the patterns of previous spending cycles. There is some evidence that the investment community has grown more disciplined, and the companies attracting the most favorable attention are those that can demonstrate focused, returns-driven strategies. For example, Serica Energy’s 2025 full-year results illustrate what that looks like in practice. Despite navigating a challenging year of operational disruption, the company deployed $250 million in capital expenditure while its CEO, Chris Cox, emphasized a consistent focus on “short-cycle, low-risk opportunities”. This may resonate with investors who want exposure to upstream value without taking on unnecessary geological or development risk.
According to analysis from McKinsey published in April 2026, this selectivity sits atop a deeper supply problem. The report finds that total discovered resources over the last decade have fallen by more than 50%, from 331 to 156 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Reserve replacement ratios across the sector are at historic lows, they say. Finding costs per barrel have risen by more than a third, while end-to-end exploration cycle times now average around 20 years from first seismic to first oil. In other words, the industry is spending more, taking longer, and finding less.
That may well change what investors and lenders look for, so the question is no longer simply whether a resource exists, but how confidently it has been imaged, how robustly volumes have been risked, and how defensible the development plan is under conservative price assumptions.
The cost of doing nothing, and the importance of recovery
Credible subsurface evidence (seismic, well logs, production history, basin models, prior interpretations) has become a front-line investment filter rather than a back-office asset, but when data is inaccessible, companies can face a difficult choice: re-survey at high cost, or abandon the opportunity entirely, neither of which is a great outcome.
Offshore seismic surveys can cost tens of millions of dollars, with vessel day rates frequently exceeding $100,000 and, in some cases, surpassing $300,000 before additional operational costs are included. As explained in JOUAV’s Seismic Survey Guide and in analyses from Thunder Said Energy and Emergen Research, the total cost of a single offshore survey campaign in challenging environments can be huge. McKinsey makes a related point about industry-wide capacity, arguing that a retrenched seismic industry, with minimal multi-client activity and limited new-basin imaging, has increased the cost and difficulty of unlocking new basins and plays. Carrying out fresh acquisitions to find new reserves is becoming increasingly hard to justify.
Recovering and reprocessing legacy data, by contrast, represents a more efficient alternative. The cost is lower, timelines are shorter, and modern processing techniques can extract far greater value than was possible when the data was originally collected. In a market where capital is selective and reserves are running short, “old” subsurface data is not obsolete. It is under-monetized.
The legacy data challenge
The challenge for the industry, in accessing and putting to use one of the largest archives of unused scientific data in the world, is multi-faceted:
Physical degradation
Legacy seismic data was recorded on media that modern software cannot easily read, including 9-track magnetic tapes, Exabyte cassettes, and early digital storage formats. The SEG-Y standard, introduced in 1975 by the Society of Exploration Geophysicists, was originally designed for these tape-based environments.
As documented by SEG and EarthScope, the format still retains legacy structures that complicate modern usage. The hardware required to read these formats has largely been decommissioned, while the media itself continues to degrade.
Format fragmentation
Even when data is physically accessible, usability remains a challenge. Variants of SEG-Y and related formats often contain inconsistent metadata and proprietary structures. Guidance from DUG Insight and industry documentation highlights how inconsistent implementations and a lack of standardization make integration difficult. Research published in ScienceDirect confirms that these format inconsistencies remain a persistent barrier to the effective utilization of seismic data.
Loss of context
A further challenge is the loss of contextual information required to interpret the data. Acquisition reports, coordinate systems, and geometry files are often missing or incomplete. Without this context, seismic data cannot be reliably used. As the AAPG has noted, reprocessing legacy seismic data can unlock new exploration opportunities, but only when the data is first made accessible and then interpretable.
The challenges across the market
The challenges play out differently for each kind of company. The majors hold an advantage in the legacy data estates they already own, alongside the resources to deploy them quickly. For the independents, their case for capital depends on data-backed subsurface insight, which can make accessible legacy data the difference between a fundable opportunity and one that stalls. This, in turn, can present a problem for countries and NOCs seeking the most agile and competitively priced bidders.
Swimming in data
Unlocking legacy G&G data could, at least in part, help identify and pinpoint the energy sources that would protect the world from the shocks that have shaken markets in recent months and years. Despite the benefits, much of what exists in the industry remains inaccessible.
Across Africa, Latin America, and Asia, decades of subsurface exploration data sit in archives, much of it collected during exploration campaigns from the 1960s through to the 1990s. As CNBC has reported, the industry is effectively “swimming in data it doesn’t use.” Ovation Data’s 2026 poll found that 45% of geoscience professionals are now extremely concerned about the permanent loss of legacy data, up from 41% the year before. In Latin America, countries such as Mexico and Argentina hold significant legacy datasets from earlier exploration periods that could prove useful today. In Asia, Pakistan’s Offshore Indus Basin alone holds nearly 70,000 km of legacy seismic data acquired since the 1960s, with similar archives sitting in Indonesia and India across basins that remain materially underexplored.
As decades go by, systems change, and ways to record data evolve. The cost of inaccessibility is high for both individual companies and the wider global energy market.
The value of unlocked data
Across the industry, companies that have committed to reprocessing historical datasets have shown what is possible.
Deltic’s work on the Blackadder prospect in the UK North Sea is a compelling example. Updated structural mapping of legacy 3D seismic revealed that a well, drilled by Dana Petroleum in 2013, had actually intersected a materially larger structure than originally interpreted. The entire initial work program for the license is focused on reprocessing legacy data at nominal cost. As CEO Graham Swindells put it, the reworking of legacy datasets had “unearthed a potential missed pay opportunity of material scale.” The discovery was not the result of a new survey; it was hidden in existing data. Wood Mackenzie estimates that up to £10 billion of pre-tax value could be unlocked from existing North Sea assets alone under the right conditions. If that is the scale of opportunity in one of the world’s most mature basins, the potential in less-explored regions, where legacy data has seen far less modern reprocessing, could be considerably greater.
Some companies and countries are already exploring the opportunities. In Equatorial Guinea, Panoro Energy has built its exploration program across Blocks EG-01 and EG-23 around the reprocessing of existing seismic data before committing to any drilling activity. The strategy is to use what is already there to define and de-risk outcomes, and in turn, drill locations with greater confidence. At the same time, evidence from the Journal of Petroleum Technology demonstrates how seismic reprocessing has reduced uncertainty in offshore fields in Egypt, directly supporting more informed exploration decisions.
In Austria, OMV, one of the country’s largest listed companies and an integrated oil, gas, and petrochemical operator active in 20 countries, has modernized its entire library by extracting and migrating metadata, rationalizing duplicate files, and developing bespoke decoding software to tackle the most challenging data. With the help of Ovation Data, each seismic volume was reconstituted into a common, open, readable format, free from vendor lock-in. The data is now actively used by OMV teams across multiple locations, and assets that were at risk of being lost forever are now cataloged, protected, and positioned to generate value for years to come.
OMV’s experience is true at industry scale. Indeed, energy security rests on what the industry can find, develop, and bring to market in a timely manner. When the time is taken to recover and reprocess legacy data, new commercial opportunities can be unlocked without the cost of fresh acquisition. While fields are declining, capital is selective, and the world’s supply is prone to disruption, recovering data the industry already holds has become a contribution to the resilience of global energy supplies. All this at a moment when the data needed to support a faster, more efficient exploration response is of greater value – and more vulnerable – than ever before.
Why Ovation
The OMV project outlined in this blog reflects what Ovation Data has been doing for more than 45 years, working with energy companies across more than 50 countries. Our specialists transcribe more than 500k tapes and cartridges every year, across 275 media types spanning over 60 years of technology. Data is returned in common, open formats, with no vendor lock-in and no egress fees. For organizations whose archives have become commercially significant, those things matter.
To find out more, contact us.