Companies in the news

Vol. 226 No. 4

KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton, opened its newest engineering center in Jakarta, Indonesia. The center is part of KBR’s Energy & Chemicals Division and will provide engineering services to local, regional and international clients. KBR has over 30 years of project execution experience in Indonesia. The Jakarta office has over 60 employees, including engineers, designers and support staff, and is headed by director Pete Wiggin, who has over 30 years of industry and project experience. He served previously as director of KBR’s engineering center in Monterrey, Mexico.

Veritas DGC Inc. announced the successful farm-out of its Promote License for UKCS Central North Sea Block 16/21d, which is adjacent to the Balmoral and Dumbarton fields and near the recent Brenda discovery. The block contains the presently abandoned Bladon oil field, and significant potential prospectivity has been identified using Veritas long-offset 3-D seismic data. Under the terms of the agreement, Kerr-McGee will assume a 100% stake in the block. Veritas retains 100% interest in 11 Twenty-first and Twenty-second Round Promote Licenses covering 12 blocks in the UK Central North Sea.

Knowledge Reservoir and Scandpower Petroleum Technology (SPT) have signed an agreement to jointly pursue the software-based reservoir simulation history-matching market. The technical workflow will revolve around the use of the MEPO software, released last year by SPT. The product enables decision-making through uncertainty assessment, history matching and reservoir forecasting of reservoir models. Knowledge Reservoir L.P. is an energy consulting firm based in Houston, Texas, and Aberdeen, Scotland. SPT is a software and consulting company headquartered in Oslo, Norway.

Oilfield services company Expro has acquired Read Matre Instruments AS (RMI), a Norwegian-based subsidiary of Read ASA. RMI will operate within Expro’s Subsurface Systems business stream. RMI is a supplier of subsea sensor and monitoring technologies designed to withstand extreme temperatures and pressures. Expro has established positions in the subsea development market through its portfolio of products and services.

IHS Energy signed a sales alliance and joint marketing agreement with Trango Technologies of Calgary, Alberta, to market Trango’s exploration data management software and solutions in the US. Under this agreement, IHS Energy’s Data Logic Services division will act as a sales and services provider for Trango’s products in the US. IHS Energy and Trango will work together to provide data migration, support and training.

Jiskoot, a supplier of flow measurement products to the oil and gas industry, announced the completion of a management buyout, finalizing the company’s succession plan that allows managing director Mark Jiskoot and the board of directors to continue the business expansion program started in 2004. Retiring Chairman J. J. “Beer” Jiskoot founded the company in 1961.

Halliburton Digital and Consulting Solutions has acquired the smartSECTION geologic software business from A2D Technologies, a TGS-NOPEC Company. SmartSECTION provides raster image cross-section application, and uses depth-calibrated well log images for high-volume well log correlation and geologic interpretation. The company plans to integrate smartSECTION software with the GeoGraphix database (GXDB) and Landmark’s OpenWorks database. Plans also include continuing to support smartSECTION software and its Oracle database in its current environment.

National-Oilwell, Inc., and Varco International, Inc., jointly announced that, based upon a review of stockholder proxies returned to the companies, they will close the previously announced merger of the two companies. The Department of Justice has elected to not take action to enjoin the merger. The decision comes after a seven-month investigation, including a second request. National Oilwell designs and manufactures equipment and components used in oil and gas drilling and production, as well as in providing supply chain integration services to the upstream oil and gas industry. Varco International, Inc., is a provider of services, products and highly engineered equipment to the oil and gas industry.

Atlas Interactive, provider of e-learning solutions to the oil and gas industry, acquired Petroweb Solutions, the provider of web-based information management systems, and the owner of DETAIL software. Harry van der Vossen has joined Atlas as part of the senior management team, and is working with Atlas’ business development team to integrate the Petroweb products into the Atlas portfolio.

Rock Solid Images will provide regional rock-physics and seismic modeling data to support Endeavour International Corp.’s exploration activities in the Central Graben of the UK North Sea. Approximately 50 wells will be pre-processed using GWLA petrophysical workflows and then analyzed within the MOSS product suite.