Schlumberger acquires MetaCarta Oil & Gas Sector GIS software

On December 17, 2007, Schlumberger acquired MetaCarta's Oil & Gas Sector GIS software.

From the Press Release:

"MetaCarta is the perfect compliment to expand the Schlumberger industry leadership in information management. With the increasing amount of information held in unstructured form, such as documents, presentations and web content, MetaCarta’s geographically-specific access to unstructured content brings new power to petrotechnical professionals," said Olivier Le Peuch, president, Schlumberger Information Solutions (SIS). "In combination with our geoscience and engineering information management solutions, now petrotechnical professionals will be able to rapidly incorporate all available information that is relevant to their prospect or field."

MetaCarta search technology combines map-driven geographic search, geographic referencing, temporal filtering and data visualization capabilities, for both structured and unstructured content, making that content "location-aware". This enables geoscientists and engineers to rapidly find and display relevant data in the context of their area of interest.

Schlumberger in the past, has been involved with GIS and mapping providers. For much of their software, such as GeoFrame and Finder Data Management, they have used Mentor Software's CS-Map Library (this was recently bought by AutoDesk and is not being implemented in the Open Source world - see the Terra ETL Blog for more information) and have been involved in such groups as the Americas Petroleum Survey Group for many years.

Of course, they, as all large companies, have also been influenced by the Microsoft of GIS, ESRI - this came in creating utilities and tools that worked off of ArcView and read Shape Files with the Finder Product. SmartView is an extension to ArcView and allows browsing, displaying, and plotting of Finder data. It provides the ability to retrieve exploration and production data from Finder and display it in ArcView, using all of ArcView's capabilities for mapping, special queries and data integration. Virtual data integration is possible as ArcView allows the handling of data from many sources, together with Finder data.

So in the end, this acquisition of MetaCarta's Oil & Gas sector GIS software makes sense. GIS has slowly crept into the E&P field, but it has taken it's time.

I'd like to see other products supported out there in Oil & Gas GIS, such as AutoDesk's MapGuide, as AutoDesk is currently used in EPCM companies, initial well and seismic surveys, pipelines, etc., etc.

It is good to see that Schlumberger is not limiting itself to one technology in the area of GIS.