Business News for the week of 24 December 2012

News section front
Past news briefs
Seismic crew survey reports

TGS commences 3D multiclient seismic survey offshore northwest Australia

13 December 2012—TGS has commenced acquisition of a 3D multiclient seismic survey, The Three Bears, which covers 460 km2 in the Carnarvon Basin, offshore northwest Australia.

This survey is adjacent to the Clio and Gorgon gas fields, which are currently in the development stage. Upon completion of this survey, the TGS portfolio of 3D multiclient coverage will exceed 17,500 km2 in this prospective area offshore Australia.

TGS is also reprocessing the Cazadores survey, which covers 4,350 km2 of the Exmouth Plateau region. The new seismic data are being acquired by the M/V Geo Caspian. Data processing will be performed by TGS and will be available to clients in mid 2013.

 

Schlumberger acquires GeoKnowledge AS

13 December 2012—Schlumberger announced that it has acquired GeoKnowledge, a Norwegian-based software company specializing in delivering exploration decision-support solutions for the oil and gas industry. GeoKnowledge supplies the GeoX software suite for exploration prospect risk, resource, and value assessment.

Core software product development will continue to be in Oslo, Norway, where most of the 30 GeoKnowledge employees are based. The company also has offices in Houston, Texas, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 

 

Dolphin awarded multiple North Sea 3D seismic contracts for 2013

14 December 2012—Dolphin has been awarded several contracts for the upcoming North Sea season. The awards are for both 3D and 4D seismic services and will involve three of their 3D seismic vessels with a total duration in the range of 8–12 months.

 

BP starts building world's biggest commercial research computer

14 December 2012—BP has begun building a new supercomputing complex for commercial research at its Westlake Campus in Houston. The new high-performance computing (HPC) center, scheduled to open in mid-2013, will serve as a worldwide hub for processing and managing large amounts of geological and seismic data from across BP's portfolio.

The new center will be housed in a three-story, 110,000-ft2 facility. Equipped with more than 67,000 CPUs, it is expected to have the ability to process data at a rate of up to two petaFLOPS.

Currently, the world's fastest supercomputer is the noncommercial Cray Titan—which is used for scientific projects at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and was built with funding from the US Department of Energy. The Titan has a processing speed of 17.59 petaFLOPS.

 

TGS announces 3D multiclient survey in Gulf of Mexico

14 December 2012—The survey, Amerigo 3D, is in the eastern side of the central Gulf of Mexico through the Lloyd Ridge, Desoto Canyon, and Atwater Valley areas.

The seismic data are being acquired by a Fugro C-class vessel and will be complete mid 2013. Data processing will integrate the new Amerigo data with TGS' modern, adjacent 3D data and apply TGS' broadband processing technology, Clari-Fi. Preliminary data will be available to clients late 2013.

 

TGS signs letter of intent for 3D vessel

14 December 2012—TGS has signed a letter of intent with Dolphin Geophysical AS to charter the 16 streamer new build vessel, M/V Sanco Swift, for 3D multiclient projects in Europe during the 2013 summer season. The charter will begin in July and last for approximately three months.