Business news for the week of 19 October 2009

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Seismic crew survey reports

TGS expands regional 3D coverage offshore Liberia
19 October 2009—TGS-NOPEC Geophysical Company (TGS) confirmed the start up of its next phase of regional multiclient 3D seismic acquisition offshore Liberia. The new 2000 km² 3D program expands the existing 9000 km² of 3D coverage that TGS initiated in late 2008. The latest Liberia phase will be recorded with long-offset acquisition and will incorporate state-of-the-art prestack time and prestack depth data processing.

TGS expects preliminary data to be available in the third quarter of 2010. Offshore Liberia has received significant interest in recent months due to the excitement generated by new oil discoveries in both the Gulf of Guinea and Sierra Leone. The program is heavily prefunded.

WesternGeco commences new wide-azimuth Q-marine surveys in the Gulf of Mexico
14 October 2009—WesternGeco began acquisition of the E-Octopus VIII and E-Octopus IX surveys in September. Located in the highly prospective Alaminos Canyon, Keathley Canyon, and East Breaks areas of the US Gulf of Mexico, the surveys cover more than 450 outer continental shelf (OCS) blocks.

E-Octopus VIII and IX target the most challenging subsalt imaging areas of the OCS. WesternGeco will apply the latest seismic data-processing techniques to these surveys, including generalized surface multiple prediction (GSMP) and anisotropic reverse-time migration (RTM).

The E-Octopus multiclient wide-azimuth program in the Gulf of Mexico commenced in July 2006. With the addition of E-Octopus VIII and IX, the WesternGeco data library of high-quality Q-Marine data in the Gulf of Mexico will exceed 2000 OCS blocks.