Geoservices Middle East

Surveying its opportunities

With a history dating back to 1958, when it was established in France, Geoservices has a wealth of experience in the oil and gas industry that has led to its world leading position in mud logging today.

The company operates over three main divisions of expertise that include formation evaluation, encompassing mud logging and other advanced services such as FLAIR, that produce 66 per cent of the business’ turnover; well intervention, which involves slick line and cased-hole logging services representing 24 per cent of turnover; and field surveillance, which essentially covers production services such as multiphase flow meters and optimisation solutions for well production. Geoservices is recognised as the international market leader for mud logging services worldwide. It’s global position covers 53 countries, with its main operations being divided across Latin America, Europe, West Africa, the Mediterranean, Middle East and Asia Pacific.

David Cook, vice president of Geoservices Middle East and Asia, outlines the company’s main strengths: “We work globally with all of the major international oil companies such as Shell, Total, BP and ExxonMobil, as well as the national oil companies such as Saudi Aramco, Petrobras and CNOC. Our operational ethos is geared towards excellence in terms of innovation and we feel we have pioneered technology worldwide especially in the well intervention and mud logging domains. We are focused on research and development, and going that extra mile is something we are very proud of in the company – we believe that we are able to add value to our clients’ operations. Geoservices is very much a people company – with over 4500 graduate engineers across 55 nationalities, we take great pride in our ability to ‘work everywhere with every client’.”

One of the latest developments Geoservices has brought to the market lies in the field of Well Intervention. Its new GEM-Line technology will bring efficiencies in terms of time, money and communication to slickline operations throughout the market. Launched in the last six months, the GEM-Line offers real-time, bi-directional transmission capabilities to those tools operating downhole. Essentially it is a slickline that enables operators to communicate and analyse data from tools throughout a Well Intervention project without having to do multiple rig-up’s of varied systems in order to carry out cased-hole logging, perforation, isolation or pipe recovery work. The system will save a great deal of operation time, as it is a lighter, more mobile system compared to existing technology. Furthermore, Geoservices has a new multiphase flow meter (the GeoXstream) that was designed completely in-house to provide extremely high accuracy measurement of flow performance, and it will be launched during this year.

With such a range of innovative solutions to its name, it is no wonder that Geoservices has experienced a 25 per cent year-on-year growth over the past few years. The company has just had a number of long-term contracts extended for another term, and its influence in deepwater subsalt regions is growing, making it confident that organic growth will continue. Areas such as the Gulf of Mexico, Angola, Deepwater Brazil, China and India have been outlined as potential regions for the company to focus its formation evaluation deepwater capabilities through it’s geoNEXT system in the coming years. In addition, the organisation has identified the US as a potential market for expansion and recently acquired a number of American companies to add to its arsenal.

However, the international oil and gas market is never without its challenges – battling harsh conditions, varying environments and the economic crisis to stay competitive is a constant battle. David explains Geoservices’ experience of the current industry conditions: “The market is remaining very competitive at the moment and there is considerable pressure by operators to reduce and maintain costs within set budgets and this has been a great concern of ours, particularly in our drilling related activities. In light of the economic situation, the number of rigs has deteriorated, which results in decreasing figures in the number of units we have operating on those rigs, contributing to significant price pressure. But at the same time, we see opportunities in bringing high quality data and efficiency to those operations through our technological innovations. We can actually save the operator time and therefore money, meaning we can continue to move forward in this challenging industry.”

Looking to the future, Geoservices is hoping to double in size over the next five years by a strategy of both organic growth and acquisitions, as well as by expansion into the new up and coming regions. Throughout its 50-year history, the company has shown steady and positive growth, moving into international and challenging markets by focusing on R&D and innovation to meet varying market needs. Its highly skilled workforce and ethos of excellence will propel the company to future success: “Through leveraging our technology and expanding our well intervention and field surveillance services, we feel that we can add to our already successful market share across the global oil and gas industry,” David concludes.

Geoservices  Middle East

Services  Mud logging,  well intervention  and field surveillance