Business News for the week of 10 September 2012

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Seismic crew survey reports

TGS commences new multiclient 2D survey offshore Newfoundland

10 September 2012—TGS in partnership with PGS have commenced a new 20,000 km multiclient 2D survey over the Northeast Newfoundland Shelf.

The seismic data are being acquired by the M/V Sanco Spirit utilizing PGS GeoStreamer technology. Data acquisition will continue into late 2012 and the vessel will return in 2013 to complete the survey. The survey area covers oil discoveries including Hibernia, Terra Nova, Hebron, White Rose, and the recent Mizzen discovery.

Initial data will be available to clients in early 2013. 

 

EMGS: Cancellation of contract in Asia

10 September 2012—Reference is made to the stock exchange notice dated 2 August 2012 regarding a contract worth approximately US $7 million for the vessel EM Leader in Asia. The contract has been cancelled in mutual understanding with the customer because of unforeseen delays in obtaining the government permits required to operate EMGS's vessel and equipment in the survey area.

Delaying the survey in anticipation of the required permits was not a viable option because of a combination of the following factors: the operational weather window in the survey area, constraints on the timing of the customer's exploration decisions, and EMGS has committed to a $20 million project in Brunei with start-up no later than mid-October.

 

FairfieldNodal adds flagship to seismic vessel fleet

10 September 2012—FairfieldNodal has added European Supporter to its seismic vessel fleet. The DP2-class vessel is 105 m in length with a breadth of 22 m, and can accommodate up to 59 personnel.

European Supporteris currently being converted from an ocean cable-laying vessel to a hybrid nodal seismic vessel, which will allow it to serve as a source vessel with its own node-handling ability. As part of this conversion, European Supporter will be outfitted with FairfieldNodal's proprietary back-deck node-handling system. Initially, the vessel will be able to handle 3200 of the company's Z700 nodes and peripherals. The vessel also has a large ROV hanger, which will eventually house a work-class ROV and upwards of 1500 FairfieldNodal Z3000 deep-water nodes.

European Supporterwill begin its service for FairfieldNodal joining up with New Venture and C-Pacer as part of a mega survey in the Main Pass area offshore Louisiana. The crew will be able to deploy over 4500 nodes using over 250,000 m of recovery rope in a single patch, making it the world's largest ocean-bottom nodal crew.

 

Paradigm joins the NetApp Alliance Partner Program

11 September 2012—Paradigm has joined the NetApp Alliance Partner Program, as part of its collaboration with NetApp to offer optimized data storage and management solutions. With this alliance, joint customers will benefit from application-specific data protection, the ability to deploy solutions with improved infrastructure performance, and enhanced data access for more effective decision making.

 

Schlumberger opens the Schlumberger China Petroleum Institute in Beijing

14 September 2012—Schlumberger announced the opening of the Schlumberger China Petroleum Institute (SCPI) located in the Schlumberger China headquarters office building in the Chaoyang district of Beijing. The institute has more than 100 petrotechnical experts, most of them collocated on the same floor of the office building in Beijing, and others working in several locations around China.

In addition to petro-technical services, the institute provides technical support to Chinese national oil companies for their international projects,as well as petrotechnical training via NExT. Schlumberger China Petroleum Institute is also a hub for conducting R&D projects jointly with Chinese national oil companies and universities.

 

Mark Bashforth named general manager at Fugro-Jason

14 September 2012—Mark Bashforth has joined Fugro-Jason as general manager for global sales and operations. He is responsible for directing the company's ongoing revenue growth in sales and services.

Previously, Bashforth held sales and marketing management positions at IBM and was part of two start-up software and services companies. He also served as managing director for Roxar Software Solutions, a technology provider for reservoir interpretation, modeling and simulation.