A year after Katrina wreaked havoc on New Orleans, more than 8,000 E&P professionals descended on the city for the 76th annual meeting of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG).  While New Orleans is still not fully back to its pre-Katrina stride, the city showed itself well.  Given that New Orleans serves as the home of our Marine Imaging Systems Division (MISD), we were glad to see things beginning to return to normal for our colleagues.

Our marine products attracted significant interest among the SEG attendees.  DigiFIN, our advanced streamer control system, was available for public viewing for the first time.  Given the number of camera-toting visitors that DigiFIN attracted, we remain convinced that DigiFIN’s commercial release early next year is being eagerly anticipated by contractors and oil & gas operators alike.  These customers see the improvements in operational productivity and image quality that are likely to occur by combining DigiFIN with ORCA, our recently released software solution for integrated command & control of complex marine streamer acquisition operations.

Interest was also high in our new reverse time migration (RTM) technique.  Given the promise RTM is showing in imaging steeply dipping reflectors such as those found along salt flanks (a common occurrence in the Gulf of Mexico), we weren’t surprised that RTM received so much attention in the city that serves as the gateway to the Gulf. 

It was also exciting to see activity pick up in the world of FireFly.  Word on the SEG floor is that one of our competitors paid a hefty price to acquire a company with a technology similar to FireFly.  This helps to validate our vision that the world of land acquisition is going cableless.  Yet, we think we’re still ahead, since the acquired company doesn’t bring all of the ‘ecosystem features’ we think are needed to make full-wave, fully-sampled cableless recording a reality.  They also seem much further away from actual field trials like the one we’ll be starting later this month with BP at Wamsutter.

ION also announced a new product in New Orleans for cable-based land acquisition.  And a launch customer, Paragon Geophysical has committed to purchase the first Scorpion system from ION.  Scorpion builds upon the field-proven System Four platform, but incorporates a host of new features that are designed to improve the system's recording capacity, reliability, productivity, and ease of use.  In keeping with ION’s focus on full-wave imaging, Scorpion supports multicomponent acquisition with digital VectorSeis receivers as well as recording with conventional, analog geophones.

While we missed Dilana at our SEG party, we understand that Hollywood now calls following her recent success on the CBS reality show, Rockstar Supernova.  More than 400 guests joined us for an evening of blues, booze, and conversation (at least between sets) to cap off what we felt was a very successful show.  We can’t wait for San Antonio next September.  Hope to see you there…