AGESCO’s Establishment

Arab Geophysical Exploration Services Company (AGESCO) was established in 1986 as a joint venture between the Arab Petroleum Services Company (APSC), the National Oil Corporation of Libya (NOC), the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation (APICORP) and Geosource. Geosource shares (purchased later by HGS) were bought by the other owners in 2008.

AGESCO’s main offices are in Tripoli and are located on Suani Road, Sidi Mousa Street.

The Company is headed by a General Manager reporting to a Board of Directors. The Company’s Tripoli Offices are the headquarters of the Operations, Accounting and Personnel Departments with a Warehouse Section and a Central Workshop. The Company buildings include a dormitory section and a kitchen/diner.

Personnel and equipment

Employing a multi-national experienced technical staff and using most up to-date equipment, AGESCO with its many years of 2D and 3D seismic data acquisition experience can offer excellent seismic and other geophysical data acquisition services. AGESCO’s list of clients includes most national and foreign oil companies operating in Libya.

AGESCO firmly believes that personnel are its most valuable asset. Currently, AGESCO employs nationals from Libya, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Syria, Irak, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Pakistan and India. All our personnel have been exposed to many years in the developing seismic industry, offering a diverse range of ideas and solutions, in which we can provide our customers with a service driven by expertise.

At present, AGESCO owns and operates two fully equipped 3D deep desert seismic crews. Each of the two crews is equipped with 8,000 field channels and a Sercel 428 XL telemetric recording system with corresponding line equipment. The Sercel recorders use the latest Sercel developed software which includes real time seismic data QC on a stand alone eSQC-Pro HCI Sun workstation. Each of the recording crews is also equipped with an independent Sandwich Box Vibrator Test System and Testif-I instrument and source analysis software.

Each of the two crews is equipped with twelve 62,000 lb peak force SERCEL NOMAD 65 vibrators. All vibrators are equipped with Sercel VE-464 vibrator electronics.

Field surveying operations are carried out using C-NAV 2050M dual frequency Starfire GPS receivers. Each crew is equipped with seven rovers. The crews are equipped with the most update processing, mapping and imaging software.

Uphole drilling operations are carried out with four Massenza Model M.I.9S Top Drive hydraulic air/water drills, 1000 feet capability and two Failing CFD-1B air/water drill rigs 1000 feet capability. They are complemented by four Atlas Copco Model XRS 396CD 17 Bar 830 CFM, truck mounted compressors, with hammer jacks to deal with the particularly hard subsurface layers. Each drill unit comes with two 14,000 litre 6x6 water trucks. OYO McSeis SX 24 digital recorders are used to record and save uphole data on diskettes.

Each of the two 3D crews has its own QC Office trailer equipped with the latest version of Geocluster® /Geoland® 2D/3D full processing and QC software. 3D statics computation software developed by Seismic Image Software (SIS) for the exclusive use of AGESCO is on use on both crews.

Our HSE-MS is a standard oilfield model based on the OGP guidelines. It begins with our policy statements, thus allowing us to clearly identify our requirements. Each AGESCO 3D crew has its own HSE department with a fully equipped clinic, trained doctors and a fully equipped Landrover 4x4 Ambulance.

Each crew is equipped with thirty two Toyota Landcruiser 4x4 vehicles, ten Mercedes Unimog 4x4 cable trucks, four Mercedes Model 1017 4x4 personnel carrier trucks and twelve 6x6 trucks and tractors. The trailers on both crews are in very good shape and as new. Two new 410 KVA twin camp generator trailers with electrical distribution systems as well as two front loaders 5 cubic meters bucket capacity were purchased recently for both crews. The mechanical shape of the vehicles and trailers of both crews should allow them access and operation in the most remote and inaccessible areas of the Sahara desert.

AGESCO crews have been during year 2008, supplied with twenty-four new Toyota Landcruiser 4x4 vehicles.

Field to Field and field to Tripoli communications are maintained using V-Sat systems with possibility of e-mail, VOIP, and modern VHF and SSB radios. All field vehicles are fitted with new Motorola VHF radios for voice as well as data transmission between recorder and vibrators. All crew vehicles, including the long haul ones, are fitted with GPS based vehicle tracking systems monitored via satellite on each crew and by Tripoli base.

Technical and Logistic support

AGESCO operates a well stocked and organized and fully computerized warehouse adequately staffed with capable spare parts men. AGESCO cargo and freezer trucks keep the field crews well supplied with spare parts, dry goods, meat and fresh vegetables. Our fuel and water tankers transport the required amounts of diesel and drinking water to the crew camp sites.

In addition to the workshop departments on the seismic crews, the Company has a Central Mechanical Workshop in Tripoli which undertakes the rebuilding of engines, transmissions, differentials and major truck refurbishing work. These sensitive operations are conducted by highly skilled mechanics.

The Trailer Building section in Tripoli builds new trailers as well as carries out major repairs and refurbishing of the field crews trailers.

Since its inauguration in November 2005 and till end of year 2008, The Processing Center carried out 2D and 3D seismic data processing for most National and Foreign Oil Companies operating in Libya.

Besides tape transcription services (from 9 track 1/2" tapes as well as from 3480 & 3490 cartridges onto 3490 and 3590 cartridges, 8mm Exabyte tapes and DLT, LTO and Shuttle X hard disks), map and seismic sections scanning and log digitization and vectorisation services are also available.