IBM today announced that WesternGeco, a major seismic
acquisition, processing and reservoir imaging firm, has selected
more IBM xSeries x330 machines to power the company’s sophisticated
seismic imaging system. WesternGeco now has over 2,500 IBM x330
based in their Datacentre in London, expanding their ability to
help oil companies find potential drill sites.
Continuing the long standing partnership between IBM and
WesternGeco, in May 2001, WesternGeco selected an IBM Linux
supercomputer comprising of 256 IBM eserver xSeries 330 systems,
all running Linux. Today, WesternGeco has bought two further
clusters of 1280 IBM eServer xSeries 330 machines powered by 1.4
GHz Intel Pentium III Processors all running Linux and Microsoft
NT. IBM has now sold three clusters into WesternGeco this year –
642 nodes were purchased in March and now the further 1280 nodes
will be installed next month. The existing clusters run OMEGA but
the latest to be installed will run WesternGeco’s EDS software.
With the high cost of oil exploration, particularly the drilling
effort, companies are turning to sophisticated methods of seismic
imaging that allow scientists to create detailed 3D maps of hidden
oil and gas reservoirs before drilling starts. WesternGeco is the
world’s largest seismic company providing seismic acquisition and
processing services to most of the world’s major oil
companies..
“Today seismic imaging proceeds virtually all drilling
expeditions and it is our goal to continually provide excellent
technology solutions within the oil exploration industry,” said
Dave Jursik, vice president, Linux emerging technologies, IBM. “We
are delighted that our high performance Linux clusters are helping
WesternGeco provide that service.”
“The use of IBM systems running Linux has greatly expanded our
ability to provide oil companies with detailed images, or to assist
oil companies in imaging potential drill sites,” said John Close,
WesternGeco’s Data Processing Manager for Europe, CIS and Africa.
“With excellent performance, we are now able to more fully utilize
our most technically demanding imaging routines to assist oil
companies with their oil exploration efforts.”
xSeries-based Linux clusters are highly scalable from 4 to 1024
processors and can be fully adapted to meet the high performance
needs of the petroleum market. Linked by a fast network, the
clusters can be easily managed from a single point of control and
can act as either a single machine or a multiple node system.
Related Story:
ZDNet UK: IBM Drills Linux into Oil Industry(May 24, 2002)