CGG Pens Cooperation Agreement with King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia

CGG announced that ARGAS, its joint venture with TAQA in Saudi Arabia, has signed a cooperation agreement with the King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in Jeddah. The agreement is the culmination of two years of informal cooperation between the ARGAS Technology Center in Al Khobar and KAU’s Faculty of Earth Sciences.

Under the terms of the agreement, CGG through ARGAS will donate 24 licences of Hampson-Russell’s comprehensive software suite of reservoir characterization tools to KAU’s Department of Petroleum Geology and Sedimentology which is part of the University’s Faculty of Earth Sciences.

Ninety students at the Faculty of Earth Sciences will benefit from the terms of the agreement which is worth over SR 26 million. The Hampson-Russell software will help prepare the next generation of earth scientists at KAU in all aspects of seismic exploration and reservoir characterization, from AVO analysis and inversion to 4D and multi-component interpretation.

CGG through ARGAS has been cooperating with the KAU since 2011 with students regularly attending lectures at the ARGAS Technology Center in Al Khobar on seismic acquisition, processing and reservoir characterization. CGG through the ARGAS Technology Center has also been working in close cooperation with the researchers and faculty from the Earth Sciences Department, System Engineering Department, Department of Information and Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering Department of the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran.

Sophie Zurquiyah, Senior Executive Vice President, Geology, Geophysics & Reservoir, CGG, said: “This cooperation agreement with KAU reinforces our long-term commitment to Saudi Arabia where we have operated through ARGAS, our joint venture with TAQA, for over forty-six years. CGG has close ties with many university centers of excellence around the world and we expect this agreement with KAU to bring value to both parties by extending our innovation network and ultimately promoting a greater understanding of key E&P technologies for the benefit of the Kingdom.”