The Oman-focused oil and gas technology company Spotlight has increased its roster of clients amid the Covid-19 pandemic as companies look to cut costs due to lower global oil prices.

The France-based geoscience startup provides technology that allows four-dimensional (4D) seismic monitoring of subsurface movements from a single source and a single receiver, reducing the cost of real-time reservoir monitoring.

“Spotlight has more clients and more projects now than it did at the start of the pandemic,” said Abdullah al-Shaksy, co-founder and CEO of Phaze Ventures, which owns a stake in Spotlight.

“Its technology substantially reduces the need for expensive hardware. It is a big cost saving proposal.

“The smart software the company has developed can analyse seismic data in much more detail. 

"It means you can get results with one sensor that are the equivalent of what you would obtain using five sensors under normal circumstances."

In addition to the cost savings that the Spotlight technology offers, Al-Shaksy says one of the reasons that Spotlight has seen growth while other oil and gas companies have suffered is because its services are targeting production rather than exploration activities.

“Exploration is the area that has been most heavily impacted by cuts due to lower oil prices,” he said.

Phaze Ventures announced that it had invested in Spotlight in April 2020.

Oman market

In 2019, Spotlight started working closely with Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), Oman’s leading exploration and production company, to develop and deploy its technology in the sultanate.

Spotlight’s technology is currently being piloted in Oman, and has been deployed in breakthrough trials with major European energy conglomerates.

Oman’s oil and gas sector has been hit hard by fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the first five months of 2020, Oman’s oil and gas projects market contracted by 6.5 per cent, falling from $85.1bn to $79.6bn.

This was the second-biggest contraction in the region after Kuwait, which reduced by 37.4 per cent.

In April, PDO directed oil field contractors to achieve savings of at least 30 per cent of their contract values.

In a letter addressed to several contractors, PDO's managing director, Raoul Restucci, warned that cost reductions were indispensable to the “survival and sustainability” of oil and gas companies in the country.