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Chemostrat Australia Opens Up In Perth
Specialist stratigraphic services company Chemostrat, born from doctoral research, has opened an office in Perth to service the booming oil and gas sector.
Chemostrat, which has operated for over two decades globally, was born from the doctoral research of one of its founding members, Dr Tim Pearce, who pioneered the technique of chemostratigraphy in its modern day form in the oil industry.
Pearce and his co-founder, Dr Ken Ratcliffe, initially worked as a two-man team in a small industrial unit on the edge of a small Welsh village. In those early days, it was simply a case of trying to persuade oil and gas companies in the UK to give the then almost unheard of technique of chemostratigraphy a try.
As companies in the UK began to appreciate that chemostratigraphy - which involves the use of elemental concentrations to define interwell correlations - could help with basin exploration and reservoir correlation, work started to flow in. At that stage, both men realised that there was potential to develop chemostratigraphy from an unheard-of specialist tool into one that is routinely used by oil and gas companies.
Although chemostratigraphy very much remains at the heart of Chemostrat, the experience gained in commercially developing chemostratigraphy has enabled the company to develop other specialist stratigraphic techniques that now include stable isotope stratigraphy, magnetic susceptibility stratigraphy, mineral stratigraphy and Re-Os geochronology. This array of cutting-edge tools enables Chemostrat to help solve stratigraphic problems in rocks of any age from any depositional environment.
Between 2000 and 2010, Chemostrat has undergone a metamorphosis from a small "cottage industry", employing five or six people in mid-Wales into an international company that employs 40 staff in its UK and Houston offices. The Houston office opened in 2005 to take Chemostrat near to the source of work in the Americas and also to ride the then still nascent shale gas revolution taking place there.
Over the past few years, Southeast Asia and Australia have been a growing part of Chemostrat's portfolio, initially from clients who had been exposed to the company in the northern hemisphere and subsequently moved to new positions in Australia and Southeast Asia.
With increasing workload from the region, Chemostrat staff have found themselves spending increasing amounts of time in Southeast Asia and Australia; in 2011, Chemostrat staff spent a total of six 'man months' travelling in the region.
"It was getting to the stage where we simply could not keep up with the work from the region by travelling back and forth", said Ratcliffe, who is the company's Chief Operating Officer for the APAC Region.
"We simply had to open an office somewhere in the region and after careful consideration and development of a robust business plan, we opted for Perth as that location."
John Woods, who has been with Chemostrat for five years working in the UK to develop the Southeast Asian market, moved from the UK to Perth in April this year when Chemostrat Australia opened for business.
He has a strong geological and chemical background and has been involved with the business development of laboratory services in his previous positions.
"We knew John was an ideal person to take on the challenge of opening and running a new location for Chemostrat. He has the right blend of technical, marketing and managerial skills required to make Chemostrat Australia a success", Pearce, now Chemostrat CEO, said. However, most of all, in his own words, John is "an enthusiastic stratigrapher".
