16-11-04

Edinburgh University spin-out MTEM has raised a record £ 7.4 mm of funding to commercialise a technology that it believes could revolutionise the oil industry.

The funding round, which is the largest first round in Scotland for at least three years, was co-led by Scottish Equity Partners along with Norwegian energy investment funds Energy Ventures and HitecVision.

METM, which was founded by a team from the university's school of geosciences, is in the process of commercialising technology that could save the oil industry billions of pounds a year that are currently wasted on drilling dry wells.
"The economic impact of this technology has the potential to extend far beyond simply the value of the oil produced," said Leon Walker. "By identifying new pockets of oil and gas, MTEM could extend the life of many North Sea fields, increasing recovery rates also from the known reservoirs."

According to technical officer Anton Ziolkowski, the group's "multi transient electromagnetic" (MTEM) technology is based on a geophysical method that is capable of determining whether deep underground reservoirs contain oil.
"In simple terms, it works by sending current between electrodes in the ground, with the resistance then revealing the properties of the earth," he said. Currently, seismic surveys are the industry norm, but too often these lead to inaccurate results.

According to Ziolkowski, using MTEM's superior technology will enable oil companies to explore not only new locations, but also find hidden oil in mature producing fields. While the land version will be available early next year, it is the marine version -- which will be launched in 2006 -- that could provide the greatest returns.
The group estimates that more than a billion barrels of additional oil could be located and produced using this technology in the UK sector of the North Sea alone. The development of the MTEM survey technology was initially funded via a £200,000 Scottish Enterprise Proof of Concept project.

Ziolkowski said that rather than follow the traditional route and embark on a number of funding rounds, MTEM had decided to do it all in one.
He said: "We were quite clear when we put our business plan together that we needed to raise enough to take us through to self-sufficiency and profitability." With the potential market worth an estimated £ 500 mm a year, he added that he expects MTEM to be profitable within two years.
The group is already actively demonstrating prototypes and is in negotiations with its first customer, based in the south of France.

Source: scotsman.com