CGGVeritas' Seismic Vessel Wins Industry HSE Award

CGGVeritas announced today that its seismic vessel, the Bergen Surveyor, has won the annual HSE Award given by the TGS-NOPEC geophysical company (TGS) for 2009.

The award is given for the best HSE performance of all the vessels used by TGS during each year. The annual HSE award was launched a number of years ago to raise HSE awareness and encourage and promote the importance of a strong safety culture on board the survey vessels.

The CGGVeritas vessel Bergen Surveyor has received the 2009 Award in recognition of its strong HSE performance while conducting three surveys in the North Sea, Greenland and West Africa.

For the North Sea survey, the vessel acquired data from April to July with very little technical or operational downtime, despite working in busy waters with the presence of shipping traffic, fishing vessels, oil field operations and other seismic crews.

Offshore Greenland, the Bergen Surveyor exceeded the original client program by acquiring 46% more data than originally planned and sailing as far north as 74 degrees where the CGGVeritas seismic crew faced the additional risk of floating ice. When the vessel was finally forced to withdraw in late October due to the formation of ice, it sailed across to West Africa where it is currently achieving high production levels on a survey due for completion in March 2010.

The award citation stated, "Throughout the year the crew demonstrated strong HSE reporting especially with regard to leading indicators such as toolbox meetings, drills and audits which are believed to reduce the number of actual incidents. This strong HSE performance has also helped lead to a strong operational performance as confirmed by the high production and efficiency statistics. The successful completion of the Baffin Bay survey was due in part to the mitigation measures put in place and the continued diligence of the crew."

Jon Beard, Senior Vice President, EAME Marine, CGGVeritas, said, "The Bergen Surveyor crew is to be congratulated on winning this award. The vessel’s seismic and marine crews worked together as an integrated team to achieve an extremely high reporting level. Combined with our highly developed safety culture, which was constantly reinforced by onboard management, this created a very safe working environment and led to extremely low downtime during vessel production. These excellent results were achieved through crew dedication to the survey projects and strict adherence to our CGGVeritas HSE policies and procedures in often harsh and logistically challenging environments."