Business News for the week of 21 June 2012

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Seismic crew survey reports

Earth Science Week 2012 Contests Announced

13 June 2012—In celebration of Earth Science Week 2012, the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is sponsoring three national contests honoring this year's theme "Discovering Careers in the Earth Sciences." This year's competitions will feature a photography contest, a visual arts contest, and an essay contest.

Students, geologists, and the general public are invited to participate in this year's photography contest, "Earth Science is a Big Job." Entries must be composed of original, unpublished material, and capture how Earth scientists work in your community.

This year's visual arts contest, "Imagine Me, an Earth Scientist!" is open to students grades K-5. Use artwork to imagine yourself as an Earth scientist! What would you study? How would you gather information? And what tools would you use?

Finally, students grades 6 through 9 may participate in the essay contest. This year's essays must address the idea of "Geoscientists Working Together."

 

TGS acquires Arcis Seismic Solutions

15 June 2012—TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company ("TGS") has aquired Calgary-based Arcis Seismic Solutions Corp. The total equity value is approximately US $51 million, reflecting an enterprise value of $72 million, based on net debt at the date of acquisition.

Arcis is a privately owned geophysical company founded in 1996 with a head office located in Calgary, Alberta Canada and a regional business development presence in Latin America (Colombia) and the Middle East/North Africa (Cyprus). Arcis has built one of the most modern 3D seismic data libraries in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.  The 3D multiclient library consists of 12,689 km2with core activity in many prolific hydrocarbon trends in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan (including Bakken, Horn River, Montney, and Duvernay).  Arcis has complemented its data library through offering global seismic solutions that include seismic data processing (using its APXTMprocessing platform), reservoir analysis, geoconsultancy, and project management.  In 2010 and 2011, Arcis generated average annual revenues of C$ 50 million. 

As a wholly-owned subsidiary of TGS, Arcis will continue to invest in multiclient projects in Canada, provide proprietary imaging services to external customers worldwide, and will play a vital role in the processing of TGS own multiclient surveys.

 

Schlumberger introduces fully sourceless LWD formation evaluation service

18 June 2012—Schlumberger announced the introduction of the NeoScopesourceless logging-while-drilling formation evaluation service based on pulsed neutron generator technology that eliminates the need for chemical sources. NeoScope technology provides real-time measurements close to the bit to guide interpretation and decision-making in all drilling environments.

Schlumberger has field tested the NeoScope service extensively for the last four years in a wide range of formations and environments that range from tight carbonates to conventional clastics to validate the measurement response. Schlumberger technical experts have also verified the challenging measurement physics through extensive modeling and experimentation both in the laboratory and the field. Typical of the jobs run during the field test phase, the service was used to acquire a full suite of petrophysical measurements in a directional exploration well in Africa, where poor borehole conditions prevented wireline tools from reaching the entire interval of interest. The NeoScope measurements acquired helped save the customer seven days by eliminating the time and cost associated with chemical source deployment while providing the data required to successfully evaluate the well.

The NeoScope service offers a full suite of sourceless formation evaluation measurements, including spectroscopy, sigma, neutron porosity and neutron-gamma density. The service also delivers gamma-ray images and array resistivity measurements for well placement. A set of ultrasonic calipers and a full drilling mechanics package complete the measurement and interpretation suite that helps optimize the drilling process.

 

John Bell joins INOVA Geophysical as the senior vice president for business development and Global Sales

18 June 2012—INOVA Geophysical has selected John Bell as its senior vice president for business development and global sales.  Prior to joining INOVA, Bell served as a director of the oil and gas vertical business unit at EMC Corporation, an IT service company.  Earlier in his career, he was a senior vice president at Aspen Technology and held VP positions for both SAP and Oracle. Bell earned his economics degree from Oxford University, Oxford, England, and has lived and worked extensively in the United States, Europe, Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

 

Prospectiuni announces regional executive appointments 

20 June 2012—Prospectiuni SA appointed Eric Williams as vice president West Africa and Rahul Gupta as vice president Asia. The executive positions will be responsible for identifying and negotiating new markets and opportunities for Prospectiuni's range of geophysical and geological services along with servicing the current client base and the introduction of new services.
 
As VP West Africa, Williams will be responsible for conducting the entire business development in all areas of expertise (minerals, oil, and gas) for the very important geographical area of West Africa. Williams is a geoscientist with an extensive track record of leadership that has spanned over 30 years.  Most notably, he held the ministerial portfolio as minister of energy and energy industries for four years in the government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago from 2002 to 2006 and was a member of Parliament for twelve years from 1995 to 2007. Recently, Williams has been a project development consultant with a group in West Africa.
 
As VP Asia, Gupta will be responsible to explore and find new business opportunities on the central Asia countries. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in commerce from University of Mumbai and a master's degree in management from the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Gupta held diverse leadership roles in various business development initiatives in both conventional and unconventional business models. He has held prominent roles at V.I.P. Industries, Essar Oil—Exploration & Production and at BG Exploration & Production India (part of BG Group). His most recent role was as president of Omnitech Oilfield Services Private Ltd.

 

dGB Earth Sciences launches OpendTect 4.4

20 June 2012—dGB Earth Sciences launched its new OpendTect 4.4 software. The new version can be downloaded at www.opendtect.org.

OpendTect 4.4 comes with three new plugins as well as significant improvements in its interpretation, editing and visualization features. The three new plugins are:

  • Seismic Net Pay, developed by dGB partner and UK seismic geophysics specialists, ARK CLS, and which estimates net pay from seismic color inversion data by correcting average amplitude to seismic net-to-gross. Seismic Net Pay is used to make estimates of either net pay or net rock volume depending on the input data and calibration.
  • Seismic Feature Enhancement (SFE), also developed by ARK CLS,is a flat-spot enhancement tool that improves the signal of consistent flat events and reduces the "noise" of channel reflections. SFE complements Common Contour Binning (CCB), a dGB plugin thatstacks seismic traces along horizon contour lines to highlight subtle hydrocarbon-related seismic anomalies and pin-point Gas-Water, Gas-Oil and Oil-Water contacts.Through its ability to enhance flat spots earlier in the interpretation lifecycle, SFE can also play an important role in reducing the risk of drilling dry holes.
  • CLAS —Computer Log Analysis Software, developed by Argentinean geosciences company, Geoinfo, is an open-hole log analysis package that integrates petrophysics with geophysics. CLAS, through which well log petrophysics can be performed within OpendTect rather than having to be imported, will result in improved well-to-seismic ties, the enhancedcalibration of seismic attributes to reservoir properties, more robust models, and the more accurate interpretation of 3D seismic data.

An additional plugin for OpendTect 4.4, which creates and uses forward models in qualitative and quantitative seismic interpretation studies, will also be launched in the next few months.