Business news for the week of 6 May 2009

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Past news briefs
Seismic crew survey reports

GeoStar and NVIDIA to introduce new product for China’s oil and gas industry
29 April 2009—NVIDIA and GeoStar unveiled the launch of a new hardware and software solution that will speed up seismic computation for oil and gas companies in China.

Leveraging the processing power of NVIDIA Tesla GPUs, GeoStar’s seismic software suite accelerates the processing of complex seismic data.

The Institute of Geology and Geophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has spent recent months testing NVIDIA Tesla GPUs with GeoStar’s solution. In a computation of prestack time-migration data covering 740 km², 24 Tesla GPUs completed the processing more than 600 times faster than a traditional cluster with 66 CPUs, a result which CAS researchers believe can be improved through additional tuning.

Tamar oil discovery stimulates East Mediterranean interest
30 April 2009—Spectrum is experiencing a surge in demand for the high-quality depth-imaged multiclient seismic data from the East Mediterranean since Noble Energy announced the Tamar and Dalit natural gas discoveries in February and April this year.

The Tamar discovery has proven the hydrocarbon prospectivity of the Levantine Basin, a sedimentary basin in the eastern-most region of the Mediterranean Sea between Cyprus and the Nile Delta that contains 10 000 m of Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary sequences. A second Noble Energy discovery in the Dalit exploration prospect has drawn further attention to the frontier Levantine Basin.

Spectrum’s multiclient library in the East Mediterranean includes 22 000 km of modern seismic data, much of which is in the Levantine Basin and was acquired in partnership with Fugro. All lines have been reprocessed by Spectrum using Kirchoff prestack depth migration (PSDM) as part of a continual program to refresh strategic data library components. Spectrum’s most recent refresh of the East Mediterranean data is the conversion of PSDM data to the time domain, with a smoothed velocity field.

Schlumberger announces management changes
1 May 2009—Schlumberger announced a series of key management changes targeted at technology integration and enhanced service delivery.

With these changes, the Schlumberger Product Group technology portfolio will be further streamlined while backed by a closely linked research, engineering, manufacturing, and sustaining organization.

 Reporting to Chakib Sbiti, Schlumberger executive vice president, will be the following three Product Group presidents:

Paal Kibsgaard, Reservoir Characterization—which includes WesternGeco, Wireline, Drilling & Measurements, and Well Testing technologies; Doug Pferdehirt, Reservoir Production—encompassing Well Services, Completions, and Artificial Lift products and services; and Jeff Spath, Reservoir Management—which includes Data & Consulting Services, Schlumberger Information Services, Schlumberger Business Consulting, and Schlumberger Water and Carbon Services.

Also reporting to Sbiti are Charles Woodburn, vice president, Engineering, Manufacturing and Sustaining, as well as Satish Pai, vice president, Operations, to whom the following four Area presidents report:

Mark Corrigan, Europe, Africa, and CIS with headquarters in Paris, France; Bill Coates, North America, and located in Houston, Texas, USA; Cesar Jaime, Latin America and based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Aaron Gatt Florida, Middle East, and Asia and headquartered in Dubai, UAE. In addition, Miguel Galuccio, president of Schlumberger Integrated Project Management reports to Pai.

SCAN Geophysical signs contract with Gold Oil Peru
5 May 2009—SCAN Geophysical announced that the company has signed a contract with Gold Oil Peru SAC for its multipurpose 3D/2D vessel M/V SCAN STIGANDI to acquire 2000 km of 2D data for Gold Oil over block Z-34 offshore northern Peru. A letter of intent was received on 20 April 2009, and acquisition of the program currently is in progress with 50% completed.