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Searcher's New Staff Facilitate Expansion
Searcher Seismic has taken on two well-respected industry heads to expand its business in Norway, southeast Asia and Australia.
Paul Miller has been appointed as Searcher Seismic's new Seismic Operations Manager in Perth and Geir Helgsen will work from Stavanger as Searcher's Sales and Business Manager – Norway, to support the company's growing presence in the region. Both were appointed on 6 February.
Searcher is already active in Norway with a high resolution multi-client acquisition project recently completed in the Barents Sea. Offering something a little different with the high resolution concept, Searcher said it has successfully carved a niche in the market and already has a significant and steadily growing list of clients. With a number of new projects in the final stages of approval, Geir's role is a significant appointment to help support this growing market, a company spokesman said. Geir Helgesen has 27 years' experience in the oil industry and has been involved in data processing, sales and marketing and business development.
In an interview with PESA News Resources, Miller said his role is to procure seismic vessels for projects – a good time to have such a role as there is an "over-capacity" of vessels at the moment – and assist with approvals processes, as well as form partnerships with acquisition contractors to enable the acquisition projects to proceed. Searcher is also involved in projects in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and most recently the Philippines, with the Pala-Sulu 2D non-exclusive seismic survey acquired by the Seabird Aquila Explorer, completed the day he started at Searcher.
While Searcher is primarily involved in 2D, it does get involved in 3D projects. Searcher's recent projects in Norway are high-resolution 2D acquisitions. "Hi-res 2D seems to be a niche market that we're filling nicely", Miller said. "2D high resolution helps image the shallower targets. It's not an area I've worked in before or have great familiarity with, but from the data I've seen it's looking at a significant improvement in resolution and imaging of the near-surface geological targets offshore Norway."
He said that, in Australia, they tend to focus on particular areas that are scheduled for licensed round releases. At present, Searcher has two such 2D projects planned for acquisition in the first half of this year: the Duvalia 2D survey in the Carnarvon Basin [3700 km of new, long-offset 2D seismic data] and the Mariner in the Browse Basin [3100 km of long offset 2D non-exclusive seismic data and 9700 km of Super-Tie reprocessing for the 2012 proposed acreage release].
After a 30-plus-year career in worldwide marine seismic acquisition, operations management and marketing, Miller said he took on the Searcher role having been asked if he knew anybody that would fit the part; when he looked at the job description it sounded like a "very appealing position" based on his previous background, and would provide a more hands-on, challenging role.
"It's on the other side of the fence compared to my similarly titled role with RPS [that he held from 2005 until he moved to Searcher]. Previously my involvement with seismic operations was more to find the people to do the job on behalf of RPS' clients, now I'm doing the job but seeking assistance from external sources, such as RPS and other consulting groups", Miller said.
"It's the nature of the job which allows me to see a project through from concept through to completion which is quite appealing. It's a far smaller company – small but dynamic, growing rapidly. Searcher has gained a lot of respect in the oil and gas community." Miller started with seismic acquisition contractor GSI before moving into consulting in 1990 with Austral Geophysical Consultants. In 1993 he started with Canadian company Intera Information Technologies, which bought Exploration Consultants Limited [ECL] principally for its development of the Eclipse reservoir modelling software. As a result of that purchase there were three divisions – reservoir modelling, consulting [which Miller was with] and an airborne/synthetic aperture radar division.
Schlumberger then bought the Eclipse software from Intera before a management buyout, of which Miller was a part, took back the consulting group and re-formed ECL, which he worked with from 1993 to 2001, initially in a technical role then as General Manager and Director of its Australian operation. He also took a seat on the board of ECL head office in 1995 as Technical Director.
From ECL he had a four-year industry sabbatical and re-joined ECL in 2005 as a consultant. One of his first assignments was in Kuala Lumpur assisting a client to manage a very large 3D marine seismic survey project in the Gulf of Thailand.
RPS acquired ECL during his nine-month tenure as Project Manager on that job and based on that work, Miller was given the position of Operations Manager (KL) following the project's completion. In 2007 the company re-shuffled and reformatted the operations group structure and Miller was brought back to Perth and given the role of Seismic Operations Manager. In 2010 he was appointed Technical Director of Seismic Services for RPS' Australia Asia Pacific region.
Today, seven years since forming, Searcher has grown from a few employees in 2008 to 17 today, and is continuing to grow its personnel and projects. It has gone from barely two projects a year four years ago to up to 10 a year today. New acquisitions, in conjunction with the reprocessing work, is giving Searcher some "significant sized data volumes" – what Miller believes to be one of the largest databases of seismic data in Australia.
Another significant aspect to Miller's role is to ensure that all the seismic operations that Searcher is involved in are conducted to the highest standards, including environmental and health and safety. This involves full compliance with regulatory requirements, keeping abreast of the changes in those regulatory requirements, such as the recent changes associated with the introduction of NOPTA [National Offshore Titles Administrator] and NOPSEMA [National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority].
One of the first tasks in his first week at Searcher was to visit both NOPTA and NOPSEMA and see where they were going and what they felt was important and to get a good handle on what the company needs to do to ensure it meets their expectations. Searcher's growth, he said, will come from doing more of the same – more seismic acquisition activity, particularly in Norway and potentially more in Southeast Asia, and certainly more in Australia in the near-term.
"We are looking at license round promotions and opportunities in several countries, some of which we've been involved in previously, some which will be new territory for us, within Southeast Asia", he said.
