TGS: Ease of access to data is the key

Norwegian seismic player TGS, which has 40 years of experience in gathering data in the oil and gas sector, is making its way into renewables. Jaan Schoolmeesters, the company’s Executive Vice President, talks about how TGS is bringing approaches from oil and gas into the wind and other domains.

According to Schoolmeesters, in an oil and gas domain, it is extremely relevant that data holds its value really well, however, in the renewables domain, it is much more dynamic and wind data fluctuates and requires continuous updates, thus software solutions become even more important.

“We have used a certain innovative business model to drive the profitability of the company and that has been very successful,” Schoolmeesters said.

“Taking responsibility for data acquisitions and selling that to multiple clients has been a very lucrative business both for our clients getting the data at lower costs and for us, so we have a strong cash balance and that allows us to look at the diversification and invest in new opportunities.”

TGS does this in the following way: it finds the areas of interest, works up interest from clients, makes sure it meets all their requirements, and then runs the actual operations.

The company then provides data through its platform to the clients, who pay a fraction of the price as if they had to do it themselves. This reduces the timeline by 6 to 12 months for their wind development program.