Business news for the week of 30 June 2008 Past news briefs SMT sells 15 000th license
17 June 2008—Seismic Micro-Technology (SMT) has sold 15 000 licenses to companies in the upstream oil and gas industry.
2500 organizations in more than 85countries around the world are now using SMT’s KINGDOM software suite for interpretation, modeling, analytics, and data management.
ERDAS providing access to geospatial images
18 June 2008—ERDAS has released an ECW and JPEG 2000 plug-in for AutoCAD 2007/2008/2009. AutoCAD users can now accessmassive amounts of geospatial image data through the ECWP high-performance streaming imagery protocol.
The ECWP streaming protocol, provided by ERDAS’ Image Web Server (IWS), transmits JPEG 2000 or ECW data. JPEG 2000 is a non-proprietary, standard image format supported by most major geospatial applications. ECW is an image compression format developed by ERDAS.
Global Geophysical Services acquires Weinman GeoScience
6 June 2008—Global Geophysical Services has purchased the business assets of Weinman GeoScience. Weinman is a provider of azimuthal processing solutions for enhanced imaging and for fracture prediction, a technology that is becoming increasingly important to oil and gas exploration and production activities. Global will retain the Weinman brand, operating the group as a division of its seismic data acquisition services company. EMGS receives further prefunding for Barents Sea survey
23 June 2008—Electromagnetic Geoservices (EMGS) has received additional industry prefunding for its electromagnetic (EM) scanning survey in the Barents Sea, ahead of Norway’s 20th exploration licensing round. The total program now stands at 5600 km2, or 18 blocks, but could be expanded subject to additional commitments. A total of 30 Barents Sea blocks currently are scheduled to be included in the round, pending official notification by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD). Schlumberger acquires Extreme Engineering
24 June 2008—Schlumberger has acquired Extreme Engineering Limited, a Calgary-based supplier of unmanned measurement-while-drilling (MWD) systems. Extreme Engineering, which will continue to operate under its own brand, maintains major operational bases in Calgary, Alberta, Colorado, and Texas, backed by engineering and manufacturing facilities in Calgary. The company employs 68 people. Onboard 3D processing completed for Marathon
25 June 2008—Wavefield and its partner Geotrace completed one of the largest 3D onboard processing projects for Marathon in the Makassar Straits, offshore Indonesia. The 3000 km2 project was processed on the vessel using a large compute facility and delivered to the client 10 days after the final shotpoint.The processing sequence included noise attenuation techniques, surface-related multiple attenuation, and Radon demultiple. Ikon Science acquires Geopatterns Technology
25 June 2008—Ikon Science has acquired Geopatterns’ software tools, patents, and technology from Chroma Energy, a US-based technology company. The software products, Chromapatterns and Chromavision, are seismically-driven pattern recognition systems for the rapid identification and high grading of drillable prospects. Using technology originally developed from genome data analysis, any 3D seismic data set can be "mined" for patterns of attributes that identify particular geologic characteristics. The Chromavision software package also includes 3D viewing of the results of this data mining process. Ikon plans to integrate pattern recognition, data mining, and visualization technologies into its established predictive interpretation workflows to characterize play concepts, identify missed pay, and delineate geobodies. Schlumberger acquires Staag Imaging
26 June 2008—Schlumberger has acquired Staag Imaging, a Houston-based provider of depth imaging technologies for seismic data processing. Staag will become part of the Schlumberger WesternGeco business unit.
The company was one of the first providers of a commercial full waveform inversion (FWI) technique. Staag’s FWI is an automatic, data-driven tool that uses the two-way wave equation method to build highly accurate velocity models of the subsurface, including complex geology formations such as salt bodies. This FWI technology can automate a large part of the velocity model building workflow. Repsol, Barcelona Supercomputing Center use IBM
30 June 2008—Repsol YPF and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) announced research results using IBM supercomputers for future hydrocarbon exploration. The preliminary findings show IBM BladeCenter QS22 supercomputers, powered by the PowerXCell 8i processor, enable searching for oil fields up to six-times faster than technology currently employed by the oil and gas industry.
The PowerXCell 8i, originally developed for next-generation gaming consoles, is a critical component to the development of a new class of seismic technology. Using this technology, Repsol was able to locate oil reserves buried some 30 000 ft (10 000 ft of water and then 20 000 more ft of seabed) below the Gulf of Mexico’s surface.
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