Wavefield Inseis ASA announced today that it has signed an agreement with Shanghai Offshore Petroleum Geophysical Corporation (SOPGC) for a 1-1/2-year Bare-Boat Charter of the fully equipped 2-D/source vessel Discoverer 2 with two single-year extension options.


The new charter will commence in June 2008, and Wavefield Inseis has already secured several months of 2-D backlog for the vessel. The new contracts are additions to the previously announced vessel backlog figures. The company has previous experience chartering the M/V Discoverer 2, and with the strong seismic market and a good operational track record, it expects the vessel to make a good financial contribution in its 2-D seismic segment during the charter period.


“We are extremely pleased to be able to add this vessel to our fleet,” said Atle Jacobsen, chief executive officer of Wavefield Inseis. ”The Discoverer 2 has already proved that it’s a high performance 2-D vessel, and the charter will allow us immediately to deploy additional capacity into the very strong 2-D market without any additional capital expenditure investments. The increase of the 2-D fleet from three to four vessels will also improve the overall 2-D fleet utilization and provide improved access to source vessels for our own permanent ocean bottom cable systems and wide-azimuth surveys.”


The Discoverer 2 was built in 1993 and was converted into a seismic 2-D/source vessel in 1996. The vessel joins the rest of Wavefield Inseis’s fleet of five high-capacity 3-D vessels and three 2-D/source vessels, bringing the total fleet up to nine vessels.


Wavefield also announced that its seismic vessel operation was affected by contract re-allocations and vessel engine repair work in the first quarter of 2008. Further, the company confirmed that the two new 3-D vessels were on track for delivery from the yard in the end of Q2 and end of Q3, respectively.


The originally planned Gulf of Mexico wide-azimuth 3-D survey that was scheduled to commence in the end of December and continue throughout April was terminated for various reasons. Due to the termination, Wavefield Inseis’s four dedicated vessels, Geowave Master, Geowave Commander, Bergen Surveyor, and Akademik Shatskiy, had to be deployed on alternative work on short notice. Consequently, the secured terms were not optimal and locations not ideal for the time of year.


In January, the vessel owner of Geowave Master requested the vessel in for engine repair work, which resulted in three weeks lost production time. Based on client request, the Geowave Commander mobilized in the end of the first quarter for the North Sea in its third consecutive year of operation for StatoilHydro. The reduced revenue related to the vessel transit in the end of the first quarter will be recovered through higher utilization and vessel revenue in the second quarter.

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