Gyrodata
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| Gyrodata Incorporated | |
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| Type | Private |
| Founded | 1980 |
| Headquarters | Operates Globally. Corporate headquarters are in Houston, with offices in all major oil and gas regions |
| Industry | Oilfield Services |
| Products | Precision wellbore measurement |
| Employees | 600+ |
| Website | www.gyrodata.com |
Gyrodata Incorporated is a world-wide leader of precision wellbore survey technology utilising gyroscopic based survey tools. To date, Gyrodata has been hired to survey around 75% of the world's wellbores. The range of products developed by Gyrodata include Rate Gyro Survey tools, rotary steerable systems, electronic multishot tools, wireline operations, and more.
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] Introduction
Gyrodata was founded in 1980 by six individuals with a specific collective goal of building a large and diversified multinational corporation, by initially providing a solution to a technological problem that could inhibit the expanding search for new reserves of petroleum.
In the mid-1970's, several major oil Companies discovered an evolutionary gap in a particular segment of drilling technology. Directional survey accuracy, that is, the degree of precision to which an oil/gas wellbore trajectory can be delineated in its three dimensional pathway through the Earth was deficient. While wells were increasingly being drilled to greater depths and in more complex angular patterns, the Companies found that conventional oil well surveying equipment left an unacceptable degree of uncertainty that worsened with depth and angle in defining a wellbore's path, and consequently, in defining the below ground position and extent of hydrocarbon reservoirs.
A much higher degree of survey accuracy would enhance the search for, and development of, new reserves by making both drilling and producing operations more precise and efficient, especially offshore where accuracy becomes highly crucial because many wells are drilled in a complex arrangement from a single structure. Accurate surveys would mean optimised drilling, improved wellbore targeting, better reservoir definition, enhanced secondary/tertiary recovery and increased safety.
The problem called for new survey technology. The solution was found where the science of navigation had reached a far higher level of accuracy than in the oil industry.
In the defence industry significantly more accurate navigation instrumentation was available and by harnessing these designs to make them suitable for borehole applications a ten fold improvement in directional accuracy could be achieved. It was the combination of defence technology with Gyrodata's oil industry experience that culminated in the new generation of borehole survey equipment.
Gyrodata's objectives were to make these accurate sensors, function reliably in the harsher wellbore environment; design and build the surface/ downhole support electronics and micro processing systems, and provide a high standard of comprehensive service throughout the oil exploration and producing areas of the world.
[edit] Development
The founders of Gyrodata comprised of a group of oil industry specialists with the broad expertise required to carry this initial project through. The six original partners possessed over 30 years of experience in designing and building sophisticated downhole instruments and just as much combined knowledge of energy industry finance, worldwide marketing and field operations.
The first necessity was a complete design for the Rate-Gyro System. Since Gyrodata was a start-up company without the financial means of an existing conglomerate, the design had to be sufficiently viable to obtain development funding for what was considered a radical and complex project, costly and not without substantial risk. Yet all expectations were exceeded.
No greater complement to design could have been paid than what actually occurred. The company obtained the majority of its R&D capital from potential customers. Several major oil companies provided a combination of loans and preferential service contracts to realise this much-needed new technology.
This initial funding and subsequent additional funds from venture capitalists saw the Rate-Gyro System go from a prototype to a commercial viability in 1983. Since that time the instrument has become recognised as a reliable, high accuracy survey instrument in some of the most demanding markets around the world.
Gyrodata has now grown from the original research, design and development company into a multinational service company offering a wide range of surveying services employing high technology products which not only include gyro surveying but also solid state magnetic surveying instrumentation.
Throughout this the company has remained a dedicated surveying company, thereby ensuring attention to all aspects of what is such an important part of drilling an oil well.
