Contract award for the Acquisition and processing of 120 Magnetotelluric sites near Antrim town, Northern Ireland for Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies

The Dublin Institute of advanced Studies awarded a contract for the acquisition of approximately 120 magnetotelluric (MT) soundings near Antrim town in Northern Ireland. The successful tenderer will assist DIAS in geophysical (Magnetotelluric, MT) data acquisition, including site scouting, MT data processing and reporting. A full detail of expected protocols and deliverables are set out in section 2.5 below. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS), within the framework of GEMINI project, was seeking a Contractor to acquire, quality control, process approximately 120 wideband MT soundings in the County Antrim jurisdiction of Northern Ireland (UK). GEMINI was a new, multi-partner, all-island geothermal energy demonstration project. The project is supported by the PEACEPLUS programme managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB) and endorsed by the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, Ireland and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland. Over the next four years the GEMINI project will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with heat production, a goal central to EU, UK and Irish strategies to meet 2050 emissions targets. The objective of this MT survey was to improve geothermal resource understanding in County Antrim. The target reservoir was Sherwood Sandstone Group, which is a highly productive and regionally important aquifer in Northern Ireland. The exact locations of the MT sites were not yet finalised at the time of tendering as it was expected a percentage of the total number would be coincident with other geophysical methods (e.g. gravity, active and passive seismic methods) within GEMINI. It was estimated that one MT site per km2 was expected, however this distribution had to be flexible to account for anthropogenic infrastructure, scouting/permitting, etc. It was estimated that 40 percent of site scouting and permitting would be accomplished prior to the survey by DIAS and Geological Survey of Northern Ireland (GSNI). The Contractor was required to finalise the outstanding scouting and permitting with the advice from DIAS/GSNI. This had to be included in the Contractor’s Financial budget. DIAS would be simultaneously acquiring wideband data in County Cork to achieve a “far remote” which has been proven to yield optimal MT transfer functions. It was expected that the Contractor would also locate and service a remote in the north of the island of Ireland. DIAS required high-quality MT soundings from 10,000 Hz to 0.001 Hz for each site. All responses had to be submitted in a ZIP File format.