Schlumberger enters offshore seismic agreement with Sri Lanka

Schlumberger subsidiary Eastern Echo DMCC will acquire, market, and licence seismic data offshore Sri Lanka on a multi-client basis, under an agreement with country’s Ministry of Petroleum Resources Development.

This will allow various 2D and 3D acquisition programmes to go forward in selected offshore areas around Sri Lanka, at no cost to the government.

Eastern Echo DMCC has committed to invest a minimum of US$50 million in the project, which will include advance data processing/interpretation work or modelling of petroleum, depending on the country’s requirement and pre-commitments to be secured by the contractor.

The company expects to recover its costs from sales of the proceeds to clients.

According to the Ministry, the main aims of the accord are to acquire more petroleum data using modern acquisition and processing techniques, thereby reducing the technical and financial risk to parties considering deep-water exploration off Sri Lanka and to encourage an increased level of investor participation in oil and gas exploration activities.

Also covered under the agreement is the provision of training on petroleum systems modelling and interpretation of the new data.

Further integration with, and updating of, the existing geotechnical database should increase understanding of the sub-surface.

In addition, the government will receive a share of future data sales revenue either in cash or structured competency development programmes/software from Schlumberger.

Source: Offshore Magazine