Down The Memory Lane

With a view to provide a past perspective to the oil exploration in India SPG intends to publish vintage visuals depicting events, personalities etc. from times bygone. SPG community is requested to send in a copy of such visual mementoes from past to editorial team. We present above India's first Marine Seismic Survey vessel M/V Mahindra (see pic.).

SEG Conference Salt Lake City..

The 72nd Annual Conference of SEG, USA at Salt Lake City was attended by a team of Geoscientists from ONGC, OIL and SPG. (see pic). It is learnt that Apache Corporation, USA has further extended its sponsorship of SEG's Global membership scheme (see form on last page). Interested persons may also refer to the SEG website (www.seg.org) for more details.

Current president Mike Bahorich and past president Walter Lynn of SEG at ONGC Stall.

Industry News

The first two Virtual Reality Centres in Indian E&P industry have been commissioned by ONGC at it's Mumbai and Panvel centres. These state of the art centres are backed by Silicon Graphic Hardware and run Landmark (at Panvel) and Paradigm Geophysical (at Mumbai) software to provide three dimensional subsurface visualisation. More such centres are planned for ONGC centres at Dehradun and Jorhat.

Dr. V P Dimri Director, NGRI Hyderabad, (see pic) has been touring Bulgaria and France on a visit to various geo-scientific institutions with a view to explore the possibilities of collaboration with these countries in the field of Science and Technology. Several fields viz. seismic risk analysis, geothermics and groundwater have been identified for the cooperation with Bulgarian agencies. NGRI is already collaborating with French institutes in the field of water sciences.

Dr. V.P. Dimri, Dir NGRI

In a far reaching move ONGC has inked a deal to buy 37.38% stake held by Birlas in the Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemical Ltd.; a Birla group joint venture with HPCL with Rs. 492 crore turnover in 2001-2002. This deal valued at Rs. 59.5 crores marks the beginning of downstream diversification by ONGC. ONGC is also keen to buy out HPCL stake in the venture.

Veritas DGC Inc. has reported completion of largest ever contiguous, non-exclusive, marine