Business news for the week of 30 November 2009 News section front
Past news briefs
Seismic crew survey reports DownUnder GeoSolutions opens Houston office
13 November 2009—DownUnder GeoSolutions has opened its fourth international office, with its newest address in Houston. Heading up the Houston office is recently appointed business development manager, David Williams. During the early stages of his career, David was a VSP specialist with Schlumberger in their UK North Sea operation. In 1991 he opened the GX Technology London office as Regional Manager (EAME) and later moved to the GXT Houston office as the company focused on developing its imaging services business. In 2000, Williams joined the Norwegian startup company, VoxelVision (later acquired by Schlumberger), responsible for development and sales of the company's 3D volume interpretation system, GigaViz. Until recently DownUnder GeoSolutions' suite of DUG Software has only been available to clients who have utilized seismic processing and depth imaging, quantitative interpretation, and integrated petrophysical services. However, DownUnder GeoSolutions has commercialized their proprietary quantitative interpretation workflow and released these tools to the open market. The tools currently available in the DUG Software work-flow are DUG Insight which is the 2D and 3D package for seismic interpretation; DUG Well which is used for log visualisation and manipulation, Gassmann substitution and deterministic AVO modeling; and DUG Mod + which is a complete forward modeling toolkit. OHM enters strategic partnership with BGP and secures marine CSEM survey in offshore Equatorial Guinea
16 November 2009—OHM has entered into a strategic partnership with the Bureau of Geophysical Prospecting in China (BGP) to provide marine CSEM survey design, acquisition and processing services to BGP. BGP has awarded the first survey to OHM within the framework of this new agreement for the acquisition of marine CSEM data offshore Equatorial Guinea, with a contract value of approximately US $2.5 million. DI international obtains strategic position in eastern Europe
20 November 2009—DI International announced its expansion into eastern Europe with the opening of an office in Bucharest, Romania.
The new office is headed by Serban Veliciu and a team of oil and gas professionals is positioned to provide the international oil industry with exploration and production data for the entire region. The Bucharest team has access to new data sources throughout Eastern and Central Europe.
Like the other six DII offices, the Bucharest team obtains and quality-checks well status and location data, licensing rounds, contract changes, and other relevant information and posts it in near-real time to the DII subscriber website.
Romania's own oil production began in 1857, and the country is now the second highest onshore producer in Europe after Russia, and ranks fourth in European offshore production after Russia, the UK, and Norway. SeisWare International Inc releases of SeisWare 7.1
20 November 2009—SeisWare International has released SeisWare 7.1. This version of the PC-based seismic interpretation software contains major enhancements including integration with IHS PETRA geological software, ability to link to ESRI shapefiles or SDE layers, custom coordinate system, and compatibility with Windows 7.
The new version also includes extensive software enhancements to the 3D Visualizer, cross plotting, custom coordinate system, time-to-depth and basemap functionality.
SeisWare 7.1 is available to existing customers at no cost and is an all-inclusive package to new users at a low annual price that includes support, maintenance and all product upgrades. SMT opens Abu Dhabi office
23 November 2009—Following the release of OpendTect under the GNU GPL license, dGB Earth Sciences started another initiative aimed at stimulating seismic education and R&D. It created the Open Seismic Repository (OSR), a WIKI site where free and public data sets inclusive interpretations are made available to the seismic community at large. The data are stored as compressed OpendTect surveys that can be downloaded using bit-torrent technology. Bit-torrents enable users to share large data files with each other under the principle "freely you receive, freely you give." One of the advantages of this technology is that download speed increases as more people download and share files. Another advantage is that if the download is interrupted it simply resumes as soon as the internet link is operational again.
In September 2009 dGB released OpendTect v4.0, the first complete open source seismic interpretation system, under a triple licensing policy: (1) under the GNU / GPL license, (2) under a commercial license and, (3) under an academic license. The new release and changed licensing model have been well received by the seismic community. In just three months time the OpendTect community has grown exponentially while the software was downloaded more than 7500 times. UniQ land seismic system deployed for Kuwait Oil Company
2 December 2009—WesternGeco has deployed the UniQ point-receiver land seismic acquisition and processing system in Kuwait for Kuwait Oil Company (KOC). The system is currently acquiring data from 45,000 live point-receiver channels utilizing WesternGeco DX-80 Desert Explorer vibrators and MD Sweep technology. Part of the Q-Technology portfolio, the UniQ system combines extreme channel count point-receiver technology with support for advanced simultaneous source techniques. Building upon the fidelity provided by the broad bandwidth geophone accelerometer sensor, UniQ can support up to 150,000 live channels at a 2-ms sample interval. The WesternGeco suite of advanced geophysical services includes electromagnetic services and the Q-Technology point-receiver high-fidelity seismic acquisition-to-inversion platform. WesternGeco commences new wide-azimuth Q-marine survey
3 December 2009—WesternGeco has started acquisition of the E-Octopus VII survey in November. Located in the Walker Ridge and Keathley Canyon areas of the US central Gulf of Mexico, the multiclient survey covers approximately 300 Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) blocks. E-Octopus VII targets the high profile Lower Tertiary trend in a challenging subsalt imaging area of the Walker Ridge. The survey integrates previously acquired E-Octopus IV and E-Octopus VI phases to further expand the wide-azimuth coverage of the WesternGeco data library. The latest seismic data processing techniques will be applied to the survey, including 3D GSMP generalized surface multiple prediction and anisotropic reverse time migration (RTM). Both techniques are enhanced by the Q-Marine point-receiver marine seismic acquisition system. The E-Octopus multiclient wide-azimuth program in the Gulf of Mexico commenced in July of 2006. With the addition of E-Octopus VII, WesternGeco will have acquired over 3100 OCS blocks of high-quality Q-Marine wide-azimuth data in the Gulf of Mexico. The E-Octopus project is a member of the WesternGeco family of multiclient E-surveys that utilize advanced acquisition and processing technologies. The WesternGeco suite of advanced geophysical applications includes electromagnetic services and the Q-Technology point-receiver high-fidelity seismic acquisition-to-inversion platform. PGS to sell onshore seismic business to Geokinetics
3 December 2009—Geokinetics and Petroleum Geo-Services have signed a definitive agreement under which US-based Geokinetics will acquire the onshore seismic data acquisition business and onshore multiclient library business (PGS Onshore Business Unit) of PGS in a cash and stock transaction valued at approximately US $210 million, of which approximately $184 million will be paid in cash. PGS expects an estimated gain on the transaction in the range of $10–20 million to be reported in early 2010.
The final purchase price is subject to certain post-closing adjustments. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2010 and is subject to certain customary closing conditions including approval of certain competition authorities, but not a financing condition.
The combination of Geokinetics and the onshore business of PGS will create the second largest onshore seismic acquisition company in the world in terms of crew count and the largest based in the Western Hemisphere. The company will have the assets and technical capabilities for up to 38 crews and carry in excess of 207,000 equipment channels, more than 150 vibroseis units, and possess in excess of 6240 square miles of multiclient library data upon completion of current projects in progress. The combined company will be geographically diversified with a significant presence in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Geokinetics has agreed to pay for this acquisition through a combination of cash and common stock. At closing, Geokinetics will issue to PGS a number of 2.15 million shares equal to 19.9% of its current outstanding common shares valued for purposes of the transaction at $12.11 per share. The remainder of approximately $184 million will be paid in cash. Following the closing of the transaction, PGS is expected to be the second largest shareholder of Geokinetics. | 
