Grapevine

LCT Management Buy-Out

The senior management of LaFehr and Chan Technologies, Inc. (LCT) is pleased to announce their successful management buy-out of LCT from Geodynamics Corporation effective January 17, 1996. The new owners of the company include Dr. T.R. LaFehr, Dr. Kwok Chan and John Bain, together with a group of other officers and employees of LCT, and Tudor Trust. Dr. LaFehr and Dr. Chan were the original founders of LCT. Dr. LaFehr is Chairman of the Company, John Bain serves as President, and Dr. Kwok Chan will devote his efforts to development of new technologies.

Offshore Newfoundland 1996 News Update

The OFFSHORE NEWFOUNDLAND '96 Exhibition, to be held June 18-20, 1996 in St. John's, Newfoundland, will be the twelfth annual exhibition to provide organizations with the opportunity to present themselves and their products and services to a gathering of purchasers in the East Coast Oil and Gas Industry.

HIBERNIA – Construction of the Hibernia oil platform continues smoothly and preparations for the production phase of this giant project are also ongoing. The final stages of this process are expected to trigger the development of nearby fields along with an increase in exploration for additional fields.

TERRA NOVA – Petro-Canada has announced that they are now preparing a development plan application for the development of the Terra nova oilfield to the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board. This plan will contain proposals on how to best develop the field, a benefits plan and environmental assessments.

The project schedule expects first oil to flow by the 3rd quarter of 2001 with the potential to move this date up considerably, through alliances with the major contractors. It is expected that a floating production platform will be used, although the specific type has not yet been determined. The cost and efficiency of various systems and materials will be examined thoroughly throughout the evaluation process leading up to the selection of the main contractors.

EXPLORATION – It is expected that as Hibernia approaches its production phase and the Terra Nova development begins, that new exploration and investment offshore of Newfoundland will take place. Amoco Canada is set to spend $90.2 million in exploration over the next five years and start a drilling program in 1996 or 1997. This is the largest ever bid for land offshore Newfoundland. Husky Oil and Murphy Oil have been granted another exploration permit for $5.5 million.

WESTERN NEWFOUNDLAND – Over one million hectares of land are up for bid on the West coast of Newfoundland. This contains land both onshore and offshore. Hunt Oil and PanCanadian completed an onshore well in 1995 and are drilling in the same area on an offshore parcel owned by Mobil Canada. Hunt Oil and Mobil Oil have committed $22 million towards the drilling of a second well by July 15, 1996. Talisman Energy is scheduled to drill on a nearby parcel.

OILWEB® on the World Wide Web

The Oilnet Corporation is pleased to announce the introduction of OILWEB© on the World Wide Web at http:///www.oilweb.com.

OILWEB is a free and open electronic marketplace for oil and gas. Industry participants are invited to list information about products or services they have to sell or wish to buy at no charge. This information can then be freely browsed by other potential purchasers or sellers. Information can include prospects, properties, leases, consulting services, oilfield products, oilfield services and employment opportunities, among others.

OILWEB is also a free informational resource. Unique content such as the Consultant's Registry©, with over 150 consultants currently listed, is created locally and made openly available. Additional content is continuously in development and will be served on a progressive basis in the future.

Finally, OILWEB is the only free and comprehensive directory of commercially useful oil and gas information available on the internet today. Over 1,200 resources have been located, described, organized and presented in a hierarchical and indexed directory that makes information easy to find. Included is web access to Oil & Gas Companies, Service Companies, Manufacturers, Software Developers, Event Calendars, Employment Opportunities, Finance Information, Industry Directories, Industry News, Country Information, Oil & Gas Pricing, Oil & Gas Reports, Politics/Laws/Regulations, Associations/Organizations, Government Information, Internet Lists/Networks, Research and Shareware/Freeware.

See OILWEB for yourself at http://www.oilweb.com or contact Kris A. Erlewine at 303-220-7867 or info@oilweb.com for further information.

Opseis, Inc. Expands in China to Meet Growing Exploration Needs

Opseis, Inc. has opened a sales office in Beijing to meet growing onshore exploration needs in China.

Chinese energy experts are looking to nearly double onshore oil and gas reserves in the next five years in order to regain China's petroleum self-sufficiency. Double-digit economic growth in the last decade pushed demands for energy and petroleum-based products beyond the country's domestic resources in 1993.

Seismic exploration and development of new oil and gas sites throughout China is an integral step in meeting a national onshore production need that some industry experts place at four million barrels-per-day (b/d) of crude oil equivalent by 2000.

Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Opseis now provides some 25 percent of China's new seismic exploration equipment and expects to double sales there over the next five years as the Chinese oil and gas industry expands.

Since 1983, Opseis has supplied China with 46 seismic exploration systems at a total cost of about $100 million. This cost includes 22 Opseis Eagle Systems – the latest in RF-telemetry acquisition technology.

To continue to meet China's seismic equipment demands, Opseis opened its Beijing sales office in 1995. It complements the Opseis Beijing service center established in October 1991, and will offer advanced Opseis RF technology to new and current customers among Chinese E&P crews.

The latest Opseis technology was used in one of China's largest-ever 3D seismic surveys, conducted by the Chinese Bureau of Geophysical Prospecting (BGP) in the Mo Suo Wan Desert.

After drilling some dry wells there based on 2D data, BGP decided to conduct a 3D survey using the Opseis Eagle System. With the Eagle system, the BGP completed the 11,232-shot, 743-square-kilometer (287-square-mile) survey, with full 3D seismic coverage over a 300-square-kilometer (116-square-mile) subsurface area, in less than three months.

M.J. Systems, Inc. to Market Digital Log File

M.J. Systems, Inc. is digitizing approximately 760 wells in Stark, Billings, Dunn, Slope, Hettinger, and Golden Valley counties in North Dakota. Four curves (Gamma Ray, Sonic, Deep Resistivity and Density) are being captured and delivered as an LAS file sampled every 0.5 feet. Sample rate and file format can be customized to specific applications. This digital log file is being developed to aid subsurface and seismic exploration for Lodgepole mounds as well as other objectives in the Dickinson area.

Other productive intervals incorporated with this data base include Red River, Interlake, Duperow, Mission Canyon/ Fryburg, and Tyler.

Six prolific Lodgepole fields have been found to date, utilizing 3-D seismic data, and several hundred square miles of additional 3-D data are in various stages of acquisition and interpretation by several companies. Changes in the overlying stratigraphy, particularly the Spearfish to Opeche salt intervals, may have a profound impact on the Lodgepole seismic data response.

Well log curves will be captured from the Upper Cretaceous Greenhorn Formation to total depth. The Greenhorn is an excellent seismic horizon that is commonly used for isochron/isopach mapping in the Williston Basin.

The project is being completed in two phases. Phase I includes approximately 330 wells that penetrate the Lodgepole or deeper. These wells incorporate the landward to basinward extent of many of the Lodgepole clinoforms which are considered important for defining the "Lodgepole fairway". The curves will be captured from 4,000 feet to an average TD of 11,800 feet. Completion of Phase I is scheduled for March, 1996.

Phase II incorporates approximately 430 Tyler/Fryburg wells to the west of the Dickinson area. The curves will be captured from 4,000 feet to an average TD of 8,600 feet. These wells will help uphole stratigraphic correlations, as well as providing an extensive database for Mississippian Fryburg and Pennsylvanian Tyler production. Completion of this phase will be by June 1996.

New Streamer Technology from WAI

Western Atlas Inc. (WAI) recently announced successful sea trials in the Gulf of Mexico of a new generation of streamers. The Company's Western Geophysical division deployed a 7600-meter streamer in a 2-D production mode, a world record for seismic vessels, and is currently acquiring 3-D data in the Gulf of Mexico using a single vessel towing four 6000-meter streamers.

The new streamers, which are much slimmer than the previous generation, will also enable the Company to add more streamer capacity to its fleet of multiarray vessels at very low cost. Currently, Western Geophysical is preparing to re-rig vessels for up to 10 streamers.

• In deep-water and subsalt surveys, the longer streamers will enable the Company to achieve "long offsets" with a single ship, eliminating the necessity to use a separate shooting boat. Western Geophysical has tested an 8800-meter single cable and plans to deploy up to 10,000meter streamers for this application in the near future.
• North Sea, more streamers can be added to the Company's vessels without the cost of major reconstruction of boats and using the existing propulsion system.
• The modular construction allows for easy maintenance.
• As all the electronics have been moved from the cable into the electronic modules, the streamer has become much more rugged, allowing for faster deployment of a streamer array "on the run".

Bison Instruments Unveils a Mobile, Truck-mounted Seismic Source

Bison Instruments, Inc. has expanded its popular line of accelerated weight drop seismic sources. The Bison EWG (Elastic Wave Generator) "Thumper" is now available in a custom truck-mounted configuration.

The Bison EWG "Thumper" sources are used on oil and gas seismic projects as primary survey sources, as infill sources on dynamite surveys, and as refraction sources on Vibroseis surveys. The EWG provides high frequency seismic energy to depths exceeding 6,000 feet.

The new truck-mounted EWG provides unsurpassed mobility as a seismic source. The "Thumper" can be driven through rough terrain as easily as a 4X4 truck, and it does not require large cut-lines or dozer-cleared paths)n inaccessible areas. Land damage costs are significantly limited by its portability, and its non-intrusive impact design.

Increased productivity is an additional advantage of the truck-mounted "Thumper". A new auto-cycling feature gives the operator 'one-button' control of the entire system. Placement of the impact plate, the number of impacts, and the shot delay are all automatically performed by the new controls. Move-up time is shortened by the new EWG; increasing productivity, and lowering acquisition costs. Crews equipped with the new truck-mounted "Thumper" report production rates exceeding 450 shot-points a day.

The new EWGs continue to work where seismic exploration has previously been restricted or prohibited. Examples include residential areas, over buried pipelines, next to dams or levees, and near well locations.

LCT Completes Airborne Gravity Surveys

LCT, based in Houston, Texas, has successfully completed it's first series of commercial airborne gravity and magnetics surveys.

The industries first airborne gravity, magnetics and seep finder survey over the North Sea was undertaken in the summer of 1995. LCT under contract to SPT, installed one of it's advanced GPS based dynamic LaCoste and Romberg gravity systems in a Cessna 404 equipped for high resolution magnetics acquisition. The aircraft was operated by Kecron Surveys from Perth, Australia. Seepfinder technology was provided by Oil Search PLC from the UK. A 15,000 line gravity program (2 km by 6 km grid flown at 500 feet) was completed in one month, and the final processed products were available within 8 weeks of the start of the survey. The results demonstrate an accuracy equivalent to that achieved from a 2D marine gravity survey (by comparison with BGS marine data).

Two airborne surveys have also been successfully completed in South America. These gravity and magnetic surveys were acquired using an LCT-operated Cessna Caravan which was also equipped with a fully compensated stinger mounted cesium vapor magnetometer. The stability, reliability and slow flying speed make the Cessna an ideal platform for operations in the Andean Cordillera. In these geologically complex overthrust areas, where seismic data are difficult to process and interpret and costs are upwards of US $15,000 per km, airborne gravity and magnetic data, at I% of the cost of the seismic data, provides a rapid and cost effective means of reducing risk and improving exploration success.

LCT has recently been awarded a major airborne gravity acquisition project in Peru. This survey will be acquired jointly with Aerodat (Houston) and is planned to be completed early in 1996.

David Millar Joins INT as VP of Sales and Marketing

Interactive Network Technologies, Inc. (INT) recently announced that David H. Millar has joined the company as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Millar has over 12 years of experience in the E&P software business, most recently with Schlumberger GeoQuest in Europe. His primary responsibilities will include the establishment of worldwide distributorships and strategic alliances for INT.

INT, headquartered in Houston, Texas, develops, markets and supports OSF/Motif compliant widgets for use as building blocks for both geoscience and general purpose software applications. INT supplies graphics tools to major oil companies and commercial software vendors.

LCT/EDCON

LCT, Inc. and EDCON will cooperate on processing of marine gravity data acquired by the Sage gravity meter. The meter was originally developed by EDCON and their entire inventory of fourteen meters was sold to LCT in April, 1995. A new agreement will permit processing technology to be shared between the companies so as to enhance current processing capability and continue development of new applications.

CPTDC Purchases ARAM24 from GEO-X

China Petroleum Technology and Development Corporation (CPTDC) recently purchased an ARAM24 Seismic Data Acquisition system from Geo-X of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The equipment, which was delivered in December 1995 to CPTDC in China, can be utilized as a single 1500 trace system or as two 750 trace systems and can be used with either Vibroseis or Dynamite as the energy source.

Geo-X, is an independent Seismic Data Processing company and is the developer and manufacturer of the ARAM24 Seismic Data Acquisition system. Geophysical Service Inc., located in Houston, Texas, USA, is the exclusive sales representative for Geo-X's ARAM24 system in China and other countries.