Business news for the week of 20 January 2011 News section front Past news briefs Seismic crew survey reports

BGP increases purchases of INOVA products

18 January 2011—INOVA Geophysical Equipment Limited announced that during the fourth quarter of 2010, it received US $15 million in equipment purchases from BGP Inc., a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation, marking the third consecutive quarter of increased purchases from BGP after the inception of INOVA. Fourth quarter sales to BGP included over 20,000 channels of Scorpion, INOVA's cable-based recording system, to be used for projects in China. Additionally, Pelton source controllers and several AHV-IV 364 vibroseis trucks and AHV-IV 364 truck upgrade kits were purchased for use in the Middle East.

 

GTI and GFZ collaborate to address the environmental impact of unconventional gas E&P activities in Europe

18 January 2011—Gas Technology Institute (GTI) and the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to launch the sustainable operating practices initiative for European Unconventional Gas. Through this Initiative, GTI and GFZ will develop and execute projects targeted to address the environmental impact of unconventional gas exploration and production (E&P) activities in Europe.

 

Petris helps oil and gas companies improve data quality with the release of DataVera 8.31

18 January 2011— Petris Technology released PetrisWINDS DataVera 8.31. 
Some of the new features and enhancements include the ability to store projects and job results in MS SQL Server 2008 databases in addition to previously supported Oracle and JavaDB database systems. With the addition of a quick start connection wizard, DataVera now provides users the ability to profile data just minutes after connecting, using prebuilt models and rules that have been verified by Petris for E&P industry applications data.

 

TerraSpark Geosciences unveils Insight Earth 1.5

17 January 2011—TerraSpark Geosciences released Insight Earth 1.5, the most technologically advanced version of TerraSpark's seismic interpretation solution. Insight Earth 1.5 builds on breakthroughs presented with the release of Insight Earth 1.4 in 2010, offering numerous enhancements across the platform that enable greater ease of use and improved interpretation performance.

 

INOVA announces sale to one of the largest operating crews in southern Iraq

13 January 2011—INOVA Geophysical Equipment Limited announced a 2010 fourth quarter sale of 13,000 channels of ARIES II, INOVA's cable-based land recording system, to Dubai based Terraseis. The deal also includes the sale of 39,000 SM-24XL geophone strings from the Sensor subsidiary of ION Geophysical, for which INOVA is a channel partner. The system will be used by one of the largest operating crews in Southern Iraq. Deployment of the equipment commenced in late 2010 and the system is expected to be fully deployed in early of 2011.

 

SMT joins upstream reference architecture initiative

11 January 2011—Seismic Micro-Technology (SMT) announced its participation in an initiative established to define a common information technology (IT) reference architecture in the upstream oil and gas industry. The goal of the initiative is to improve productivity and integration in the oil and gas exploration and production industry.

In recent months, the Microsoft Upstream Reference Architecture (MURA) Initiative participants have advanced the development of architecture components and expanded the reach of the collaboration. They have also defined the foundation structure for the reference architecture based on a three-level service-oriented architecture: business architecture, application architecture, and infrastructure architecture. And participants have developed scenario demonstrations that illustrate how interoperability can be improved among various products and vendors.

The Microsoft and Accenture Upstream Oil & Gas computing trends survey, which polled 172 upstream oil and gas professionals, found that for 44% of respondents, the upstream data explosion continues to have a negative effect on their ability to get their work done. They most often cited the following challenges.

• Difficult and time-consuming search of diverse systems to find information (44%)
• Data appearing in unstructured forms not easily captured or archived (44%)
• Data stuck in individual repositories and not easily shared across disciplines (43%)
• Too much redundant and/or unnecessary data available (35%)

 

CGGVeritas signs technology cooperation agreement with BG Group

10 January 2011—CGGVeritas and BG Group have signed a technology cooperation agreement (TCA) that focuses on the development and deployment of advanced seismic solutions across the E&P workflow.
Under the terms of the agreement, the partners will collaborate on a number of high-end technology projects within BG Group's global portfolio such as broadband acquisition and processing, complex sub-salt imaging, deep targets as well as unconventional gas.