UK firm to invest $2 m for data arm in Mumbai

Encouraged by the Reliance gas find, the UK-based $1 billion oil and gas knowledge sciences company, Paradigm, has decided to set up its data processing centre in Mumbai at an investment of $2 million.

"The recent Reliance gas discovery shows there is great potential in India for more oil and gas finds," Eldad Weiss, CEO of Paradigm, said.

"The Reliance find has stepped up the hydrocarbon exploration activity in the country manifold. More and more companies are now getting ambitious and are willing to take risks in exploration," he added.

Weiss said though the setting up of the data processing centre in India had been in the offing for sometime, the Reliance gas find prompted the company to set up shop immediately.

"We feel such a centre is now commercially justifiable, though we have been seeing an increasing demand for our services over the past two years," he said.

The company had committed an investment of around $2 million for the data processing centre, but Weiss said he was not ruling out a bigger investment in the future.

Paradigm's solutions are already being used by Reliance Industries and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation for the past five years.

According to officials, Reliance had used Paradigm's technology and hands-on support for its recent Krishna-Godavari find.

"We want to contribute in our own way to more such discoveries. Our solutions will help in reducing the risk in oil and gas discoveries," said Weiss.

Paradigm provides information solutions to oil and gas majors worldwide. The company has a global network of sales, service and user support with 21 offices in 18 countries, serving all major oil and gas producing provinces in the world.

"India boasts of excellent geoscientists, and we want to develop the local capabilities rather than processing data overseas. The centre will help us develop a closer partnership with our clients here. We may also use the centre for processing data for our overseas clients," Weiss said.

Paradigm's set of software solutions and geophysical and reservoir study services covers a wide spectrum of activities from data processing, imaging, advanced visualisation, interpretation, earth modelling, reservoir characterisation, petrophysics, well planning and drilling.