ION Geophysical Corp. today announced that it has acquired Global Dynamics Inc. (GDI), an Ontario-based company that designs and develops marine towing systems and equipment, including its proprietary SailWing technology.
ION plans to leverage SailWing technology to develop and sell commercial products for both source control and streamer deployment optimization in the towed streamer segment and to commercialize SailWings for use by its OceanGeo ocean bottom seismic (OBS) acquisition company.
SailWings offer an innovative foil-based alternative to conventional marine diverters, with multiple patents pending. SailWing configurations can be employed to optimize towed source arrays and augment towed streamer deployment systems, yielding significantly less drag, faster towing, improved fuel efficiency, and safer operations through their flexible and smaller footprint. As a result, seismic contractors should be able to acquire surveys faster and at a lower cost.
ION President and CEO Brian Hanson said: "Over the last few years, we have licensed SailWings for several novel applications, including under-ice towing and for source array optimization for ocean bottom surveys, with impressive results. We have already filed our own IP improvements around this technology platform, which ultimately led to our acquisition of the technology to provide additional offerings for our revitalized towed streamer devices business and to further differentiate our OceanGeo ocean bottom business. In the current market environment, offering solutions to our towed streamer devices customers that help them improve their efficiency, while giving ourselves a unique ability to expedite ocean bottom surveys, is an attractive proposition."
Dan Martin, Founder and President of GDI, added, "I have enjoyed a close working relationship with ION over the past few years as they developed some novel commercial applications for our technology. I am excited to now be part of ION, and to continue the collaboration to create multiple SailWing applications. I believe we can significantly improve on the longstanding manner with which the industry has deployed, towed, and retrieved marine sources, cables, and streamer systems."
