Aker Kvaerner has acquired a majority stake in 3D drilling simulation and visualisation specialist First Interactive with an option to buy the remaining shares. First Interactive provides visualisation solutions to the oil and gas sector. The companies are to develop a ‘next generation’ drilling simulator for operator training and rig commissioning. Other solutions will target remote support for real-time drilling operations. First Interactive is located in Stavanger with an R&D department in Russia and Ukraine. 2007 revenues were NOK 25 million.
SGI (formerly Silicon Graphics) has acquired the assets of clustered high performance computing specialist Linux Networx. The deal was financed by a stock sale to Oak Investment Partners and Lehman Brothers. SGI CEO Bo Ewald commented, ‘We’ve grown orders more than 30 percent in each of the last two quarters. We’re in a position to acquire key technology and expertise to further power our growth. This represents the first of such key technology acquisitions and will help further the development of our software environment and support for our clustered systems. In addition, we are very pleased that Oak and Lehman Brothers have provided additional financing to the company to help speed our growth.’
Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has selected Paradigm’s Geolog software to store its well log petrophysical data, interpretations and analyses. The multi year deal was done through Paradigm’s Earth Decision Sciences unit and includes additional software modules, training and technical support.
Eurotech has signed a deal with ARKeX for the provision of systems administration and network support for its Windows and Linux systems.
KBR unit Granherne has signed a frame agreement with StatoilHydro for engineering design services for the development of oil and gas resources in the Gullfaks Area of the Norwegian continental shelf.
The French Petroleum Institute (IFP) has signed a joint venture agreement with the French atomic energy authority (CEA) for the development of ‘Arcane,’ a high performance computing platform for numerical simulation. The Arcane project includes IT services for optimizing code for massively parallel computers. The IFP will use the codes to simulate geological storage of CO2 and for fluid flow modeling of oil and gas reservoirs.
© Oil IT Journal - all rights reserved.