Kirk Petrophysics Secures Madagascar Contract with TOTAL

Kirk Petrophysics, a Reservoir Group company, has secured a major contract with TOTAL to provide an integrated package of support to an oilfield development in Madagascar, including wellsite coring support activities, core handling, and off-site core analysis and storage services.

The £5 million contract, which will kick-off in early July, will be carried out in three phases. Under the contract, Kirk Petrophysics will be responsible for the handling, analysis and storage of the valuable cores to be taken from the Bemolanga bitumen sandstone field.

The cores are rock samples which, when analysed by geologists, allow a better understanding of how to exploit the oil reserves most effectively. They will be extracted from a 400 square kilometre area which is estimated to contain two billion barrels of oil that will be developed using mining technology. About 16,000 metres of core – almost twice the height of Mount Everest – is scheduled to be cut, recovered and analysed.

As part of the contract and in close collaboration with sister company, Storecore, Kirk Petrophysics will set up a facility, including a core laboratory in Antananarivo, and will create ten new jobs there, as well as two full-time laboratory jobs in their London office. As many as six engineers will also be recruited to address the additional work generated by this contract and other business across the companies.

Jean Valery Garcia, managing director of both Kirk Petrophysics and Storecore said: “This contract win underlines the confidence TOTAL places in our up-to-date methods (of core handling processes along with expert supervision and quality control of the handling at well site and laboratory. The combination of Kirk with Storecore allows us to provide complementary services in terms of post core handling analysis, core analysis, storage and core viewing, as well as guaranteeing the integrity of the core and, through that, the ability to extract high quality reservoir data.”

Kirk Petrophysics provides leading technology and personnel specialising in high quality core handling procedures to a global client base. Storecore, acquired by Reservoir Group in 2008, specialises in the provision of analytical petrographic services, and the handling and storage of fragile coring samples.

Both companies are part of Reservoir Group’s emerging information services division, ReGIS, which aims to be a leading international provider to the oil & gas industry of a variety of specialist geological activities. Reservoir Group’s strategy is to combine astute business deals with a concerted drive towards meeting the still-robust demand for innovative and reliable core sampling and related petrographic services, high quality oilfield data management and niche downhole products and services. The other group companies in the Group are Corpro, DOWDCO, Omega Data Services, Extreme Machining and InfoAsset.