10 May 2012 07:00
VIALOGY ACHIEVES MAJOR COMMERCIAL MILESTONES
Pasadena, CA, May 10, 2012. ViaLogy PLC (LSE/AIM: VIY). In a business update issued today ViaLogy said the last two months marked a major progress milestone in the company's development. New commercial contracts have been signed with three of the largest global Exploration and Production (E&P) firms, including two supermajors. All are focused on putting the company's technology, QuantumRD, to operational use in some of the world's most important development fields, and aiming to improve significantly on industry-standard techniques now in use. The named contracts include the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation of India (ONGC), and Chevron.
The three areas covered by the contracts vary widely in their features; they are geographically distant from one another, and of distinct formation types - sandstones, carbonates, and non-conventional shale. Each has challenged best-of-practice conventional seismic analysis techniques. One is offshore in deepwater, one in an already heavily exploited onshore carbonate formation where secondary development and horizontal drilling are key factors, and one is a new development section of one of the world's largest and, until now, most productive fields. This variety of QuantumRD's applications emphasizes the broad utility of the signal processing technology in addressing E&P challenges worldwide.
The contracts also mark the company's move into the global geophysical services marketplace, with the objective that success in work underway will lead to widespread use of QuantumRD. The company is at work on winning other large operators and supermajors as clients, for some of whom difficult pilot projects have been completed. ViaLogy also continues to work with some of its smaller clients.
QuantumRD brings quantum physics and quantum mathematics to the challenge of processing seismic data to more effectively locate oil and gas, and to characterize reservoirs. More importantly, QuantumRD brings an important value proposition to the upstream E&P sector - simply put, to achieve cost savings associated with fewer or more efficient wells drilled per barrel of oil extracted.
CEO Robert Dean said, "Over the last few years, we've devoted every resource to breaking into the supermajor market. We adopted a strategy and are achieving our goals in deliberate fashion -identifying and developing the right clients, winning projects that subject the technology to rigorous technical scrutiny, and demonstrating its global reach. This is not an event; it's a process. We believe we are well on our way. From an initial successful project in south central Texas, and also counting some disappointments, we're now working in the world's most challenging fields - such as offshore India -- and with the world's most important companies. Our current contracts are sizable; larger ones should follow. The technology is under sustained technical scrutiny by the finest in the industry; we ourselves have more development work to do. But we believe ViaLogy has passed the tipping point."
For further information contact:
ViaLogy
Terry Bond, Chairman - UK & Europe +44 (0) 1235-834734
Nominated Advisor to ViaLogy PLC (Seymour Pierce)
Mark Percy/Catherine Leftley, Corporate Finance +44 (0) 20-7107-8000
Katie Ratner, Corporate Broking +44 (0) 20-7107-8000
About ViaLogy:
ViaLogy provides reservoir characterization, geophysical imaging and hydrocarbon sizing services to global oil and gas customers based on proprietary, patented active signal processing technology. ViaLogy's QuantumRD platform assists clients in de-risking prospects over a broad range of subsurface lithologies and complex stratigraphies to generate drilling targets, position offsets and enhance recovery. ViaLogy's core technology rapidly and accurately detects weak signals buried in high noise background and clutter, and is applicable to active/passive seismic, electromagnetic and magneto telluric data. By exploiting normally disregarded noise variations induced by changes in porosity, fluid presence and permeability across the formation, and adding computer-designed noise to the data, ViaLogy is able to amplify subtle noise variations to enhance areal and depth resolution in complex lithologies that are not achievable through conventional means. For more information on ViaLogy, visit www.vialogy.com.