dGB Earth Sciences, one of the leading providers of seismic interpretation software to the oil & gas industry, today announced that it is to donate US$ 4.8 million in licenses of its industry leading OpendTect software and corresponding commercial plug-ins to 20 universities across Nigeria.

The announcement is part of dGB's continuing efforts to share its expertise and software with many of the oil & gas industry's leading academic institutions with 180 universities having now benefitted with over 1,000 free licenses. This includes 58 universities in Europe, 12 in the Middle East, 27 in Africa, 28 in Asia, 10 in the Asia Pacific region, and 43 in the Americas. A full list can be found at the OpendTect website.

The announcement, made in partnership with local Nigerian oil & gas services provider, Danvic Concepts International, who will be coordinating the local roll-out, forms part of the Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF), a Nigerian government initiative to enhance research and training within the country's oil & gas sector. A forum introducing the collaboration is to be held in Lagos on July 12th 2010 when the Nigerian Minister of Petroleum, the Executive Secretary of PTDF, the Vice Chancellors from all 20 Universities, and Paul de Groot, President & CEO of dGB Earth Sciences will be present.

The latest partnership will help hundreds of PhD and MSc students in Nigeria hone their seismic interpretation techniques with the same state of the art technology used in the Exploration & Production (E&P) industry. As well as having access to a wide variety of OpendTect plug-ins, such as for dip steering, sequence stratigraphic interpretation, and neural networks, students will also have access to dGB's Open Seismic Repository, which contains seismic data, interpreted horizons and well data from a number of global locations, including Central Alaska, offshore Netherlands, and the North Atlantic Ocean, offshore Canada.

'In our fast-paced industry where operators are continuing to face continuing exploration challenges, such as the need to reduce risk, manage costs, and handle and extract maximum value from multiple volumes of often complex seismic and geological data, it is in everyone's interested to nurture and grow seismic interpretation talent and technologies,' said Paul de Groot, President & CEO of dGB Earth Sciences.

'This announcement today is yet another example of dGB's commitment to knowledge transfer between the commercial and academic sectors, ensuring that the graduates of tomorrow in the geophysical community have the right skills and knowledge to move the E&P industry forward.'

His words were backed up by Dr. Adepelumi Adekunle Abraham, Senior Lecturer in Geophysics at Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, one of the beneficiaries of the software where it has already been installed:

'We want to sincerely express our appreciation to dGB for donating OpendTect to our University. Since the installation of OpendTect, the quality of our teaching and research has significantly improved. We now have several students using one aspect or other of the OpendTect for their projects (BSc, MSc and PhD). Indeed, this software is world-class and highly innovative.'

dGB's OpendTect solution is the only available open source seismic interpretation platform used in the oil & gas industry today, providing a highly practical tool through which the understanding and interpretation of structural geologies can be enhanced. Commercial OpendTect plug-ins, that have been developed by dGB and which universities can access, include:

• The Dip-Steering plug-in, essential for calculating dip & azimuth maps.
• The SSIS (Sequence Stratigraphic Interpretation System) plug-in to better understand the depositional history of sedimentary sequences.
• The Neural Network plug-in to detect geologically meaningful patterns (3D bodies or 2D horizon-based areas) by the visualization of patterns with similar seismic responses.
• The CCB (Common Contour Binning) plug-in, which stacks seismic traces along horizon contour lines to highlight subtle hydrocarbon-related seismic anomalies and accurately pin-points Gas-Water, Gas-Oil and Oil-Water contacts

Universities can also access other plug-ins developed by dGB Earth Sciences' partners, such as the Seismic Spectral Blueing plug-in developed by ARK CLS and the Deterministic & Stochastic inversion plug-in developed by Earthworks & ARK CLS.