PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

3DGeo Development Inc. Selected

To Develop Next-generation Seismic Imaging Technology

Santa Clara, California (January, 2005).  3DGeo Inc. (3DGeo) announces that it has been selected by the Federal government to develop and demonstrate the next-generation of seismic imaging technology to discover hard-to-find deposits of oil & gas, and to increase U.S. oil reserves and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

The highly regarded National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Technology Program (ATP), has awarded $2 million to 3DGeo to develop an automated solution to estimate the acoustic velocity in subsurface rocks yielding more accurate images in seismic surveying for oil and gas exploration.  “We are thrilled to be recognized by NIST as one of 32 out of a field of 820 companies to be so honored.  We will be able to apply their support and our innovation to produce this breakthrough - a much needed technology for the oil and gas exploration industry,” states Dimitri Bevc, Co-founder, Chairman and President of 3DGeo.

The NIST advisory board felt that as a pioneer of depth imaging technology, wave equation depth migration, and velocity modeling, 3DGeo is uniquely qualified to develop this new technology. 

Oil and gas exploration has benefited greatly from the development of 3-D seismic data acquisition, which (along with directional drilling) is one of the principal factors in improving drilling results, and reducing the costs of exploration and production.  Until now, petroleum companies have relied on time sections of seismic surveys to illuminate the subsurface and guide drilling decisions.  Depth imaging, however, is becoming the de-facto standard as a superior means of identifying complex structures that may contain oil and gas deposits in such geologic settings as sub-salt or overthrust belts.  Computing depth images truly illustrative of oil traps at depths of 10,000 to 20,000 feet or more, or hidden beneath overlying salt bodies, requires better estimates of the acoustic velocity through which the sound waves have traveled.  It is this challenge that 3DGeo computer scientists and geophysicists will undertake.

Using today's technology, determining the correct acoustic propagation velocity is a slow, time-consuming and subjective process as human interpreters scan the seismic data to identify rock units and refine them to derive a realistic and hopefully, reasonable representation of the subsurface, particularly those structures that are deeper and more complex.  

“While wave-equation depth imaging is based upon the fundamental principles of acoustic waves, and provides the most accurate depth images, nobody has yet used such wave-equation calculations to determine acoustic wave velocity models,” states Dimitri Bevc, Co-Founder, Chairman and President of 3DGeo.  “With the new funding from NIST ATP, 3DGeo will develop improved algorithms and computational techniques to attack these limitations.  We will implement a new automated data analysis technique to dramatically reduce human expert time required in initial propagation velocity calculations, and we will develop an improved technique to model migration velocity using the actual wave equation.”

Accurate images of the subsurface are key to reducing the risk and cost of exploration.  This new technology promises to produce the highest resolution and most accurate images of likely oil and gas reserves.  “In some ways, the development of this next-generation technology is a long-anticipated technical objective in the industry, and will finally put in place the last major piece of the puzzle for geologic interpreters.  Successful implementation will greatly help the U.S. oil industry identify more prospects to keep up with the enormous increase in market demands for oil," asserts Alexander Mihai Popovici, Co-founder and CEO of 3DGeo. “At $50/barrel and shrinking reserves, this industry puts great emphasis on such breakthroughs as this.”

About 3DGeo:

3DGeo Inc. (3DGeo) is a leading provider of advanced imaging software services for the oil and gas industry. 3DGeo helps oil and gas companies visualize 3-D earth structures and reduce the drilling risk associated with oil and gas exploration. Companies that use 3DGeo's services lower the cost of production, provide faster delivery of oil and gas to the marketplace, and tap oil and gas from ever more challenging plays.  Since its founding in 1994, 3DGeo has accumulated a depth of technical expertise and built a highly focused organization to ensure that promising new technologies and the latest 3-D algorithms produce efficient, quick, and robust results.  3DGeo is a privately-owned company with offices in Houston, TX and Santa Clara, CA.  For more information visit http://www.3DGeo.com.