Done deals

ION, Ikon, Roxar, AGR Group, ARKeX, CDA, CiDRA, IHS, Spectrum, Fotech, Yokagawa and ABB.

ION Geophysical has acquired seismic equipment manufacturer ARAM Systems for CDN $350 million cash and stock.

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Ikon Science has acquired the ‘Geopatterns’ technology from Chroma Energy. GeoPatterns is a seismical data mining technique that uses pattern recognition to locate oil and gas prospects.

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StatoilHydro signed a four-year global software contract with Roxar for the provision of its reservoir modeling software. The deal, worth some $5.9 million, is one of Roxar’s software unit’s largest ever contracts. Roxar previously had agreements with both Statoil and Hydro. The new combined contract represents a 10% revenue hike.

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AGR Group has acquired all of the outstanding share capital of the TRACS consultancy, a provider of integrated services and training in geology and petroleum engineering. Initial payment on the NOK 204 million cash deal will be financed with NOK 125 million of loans and a share issue of NOK 34 million. The remainder will be paid in an earn out over 30 months.

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Airborne gravity specialist ARKeX has raised $30 million from a venture capital group led by Ferd Venture of Oslo, Norway. The deal is said to be the largest venture round for an E&P service company in five years.

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UK Common Data Access (CDA) is tendering for the building and management of a seismic data store. The contract is to be awarded before year end and operations are to start early in 2009.

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CiDRA has sold its SonarTrac oil and gas metering business to Expro Group for $60.5 million. This is CiDRA’s third sale of a business unit since 2001. The metering system was developed in collaboration with BP to address multiphase flow measurement.

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IHS has acquired the digital log and raster image assets of Reservoir Visualization for $4.1 million cash. The acquisition doubles the IHS’ digital log inventory.

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GGS ASA has floated its Spectrum seismic unit on the Oslo Axess exchange. The IPO raised nearly NOK 150 million.

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Fotech has secured £6.5 million venture funding from Scottish Equity Partners, Energy Ventures and Saudi Arabia-based Shoaibi Group to commercialize its fiber optic solutions for monitoring oil and gas wells and pipelines.

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Yokogawa has signed a strategic partnership agreement with JSC Gazprom Neft for the provision of production control systems and operation support software. Yokogawa is also to provide technical assistance in control systems design, delivery and operations.

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Petrobras has awarded ABB a five year, $61 million frame agreement for the provision of process automation systems and services to eight oil refineries in Brazil.

This article originally appeared in Oil IT Journal 2008 Issue # 7.

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