Business news for the week of 11 August 2008 Past news briefs Ingrain introduces 3D NanoXCT imaging system
28 July 2008—Ingrain, the Houston-based rock physics company, recently acquired a NanoXCT imaging device.
The significance of Ingrain’s new imaging technology is that it can reveal nano-scale three-dimensional resolution of reservoir rock’s pore structures. Enhanced knowledge of these pore structures helps geoscientists determine how to best extract fluids from particular oil and gas formations.
Ingrain’s new imaging device is used for studying complex, unconventional fields, such as tight gas sands and oil shales. New advances boost visual computing performance for geoscientific interpretation
29 July 2008—Seismic Micro-Technology (SMT) announced collaboration with NVIDIA Corporation to improve the performance of SMT Kingdom software using NVIDIA Quadro graphics cards.
This agreement also gives SMT customers’ access to NVIDIA CUDA technology, a C-compiler and software development kit that allows software developers to tap into the parallel architecture of the GPU.
ERDAS APOLLO: Connecting Earth to business
31 July 2008—ERDAS announced ERDAS APOLLO 2009, a new generation Geospatial Business System that eliminates the walls between GIS, photogrammetry, and remote sensing, extending geospatial data to business applications throughout an organization. ERDAS APOLLO solves problems associated with managing and serving large volumes of geospatial data distributed across an organization.
PGS awarded major North Sea seismic campaign for StatoilHydro
1 August 2008—Petroleum Geo-Services was awarded a contract for a series of seismic in the summer of 2009 for StatoilHydro. Four of the company's seismic vessels will be involved in the surveys, giving a total contract value of around US$100 million. StatoilHydro will be the first customer for the Ramform Sterling, PGS's second new S-Class Ramform vessel, on schedule for delivery in July 2009. This vessel will operate with both steerable streamers and steerable sources to produce 4D surveys. A second high-capacity Ramform vessel will be deployed for further HD4D work. StatoilHydro awards Geowave Master a full North Sea season for 2009
1 August 2008—Wavefield Inseis ASA received a letter of intent from StatoilHydro to award a full season of work next year in the North Sea to the Geowave Master. The work will include a number of projects offshore Norway that will require up to 10 streamers. This will be the fourth season in a row that Wavefield Inseis will have worked for StatoilHydro in the North Sea. WAVE’s new high-capacity 3D vessel delivered and in production
6 August 2008—The 3D vessel M/V Geowave Endeavour was delivered from Fosen Yard and taken on a seven-year time charter from Volstad Maritime in July 2008. The vessel mobilized for its first large 3D contract with BG Norge on 28 July and was fully operational and in steady production on 6 August with 10 solid streamers of 6-km length. The Endeavour is one of the world's largest and most powerful 3D vessels with a 16-streamer vessel capacity. The vessel will complete the North Sea season for BG Norge in September and then continue to 3D seismic contracts for BP in Libya, estimated to be completed by the end of 2009. Harding Energy Partners formed
8 August 2008—A group of industry veterans have formed of Harding Energy Partners. The team offers investors and operators a combined 250 years of experience, the most recent of which is in the urban areas of the Barnett Shale in North Central Texas in a partnership with ExxonMobil. The partners are: Virtual Geoscience Consultants (Michael D. Burnaman); Steven J. Carter; Beacon Energy Partners (Scott C. Morgan, Lori J. Vining, Rick W. Wiley, and J. Ryan Leavy); Petrocasa Energy, Inc. and Pangaea Land Services (John Petropoulos); SDS-HC Oil & Gas LLC (Stephen D. Smith); Robert S. Taylor; Ferguson Crossing Pipeline (J.W. Varner); R.W. (Rick) Harding, and Harding Company, led by Rick Harding. | 
