SeaBird First Contract Award for SeaBed Operations

SeaBird has received a letter of award from Total E&P Angola for an ocean bottom nodes seismic acquisition survey in Angola. The concessionaire of Block 17 is Sonangol. TotalFinaElf is the operator with a 40% interest in Block 17 along with Esso Exploration Angola (Block 17) Limited (20 %), BP EXPLORATION (Angola) Limited (16.67%), Statoil Angola Block 17 AS (13.33%) and Norsk Hydro (10%). Including mobilization and demobilization the survey is expected to take around 4 months, and the total contract value for the survey will be in the region of US$ 25 million. The survey will be done at around 1,300 meters water depth.

SeaBird took delivery of the vessel Hugin Explorer in January 2008 and is now in the final stages of the conversion to a state-of-the-art node vessel for our SeaBed operations. Currently, we expect to commence operations after mobilisation to Angola in early Q3.

SeaBird Chairman and CEO, Tim Isden, stated the following, "This letter of award represents a first major recognition from oil companies for our SeaBed operations and provides our first contract in the high end of the seismic industry where we see great potential for the future in reservoir imaging and 4C / 4D applications . We are extremely happy to reach this milestone and to have Total as our contractual partner in our first survey using our autonomous node acquisition system in deepwater and congested areas."