Raptor Oil Ltd, a pre-revenue start-up company is to invest £1.5 million on a new research and development (R&D) project to help boost performance in the oil and gas sector.
Raptor is using proven proprietary signal processing technology to deliver an intelligent bi-directional wireless communication system with low latency and high data rate transmission capabilities into and out of the wellbore.
The project is the first to receive funding through the new Seek & Solve innovation funding program launched in June 2014 with Statoil Technology Invest to help drive greater collaboration and innovation between large multinational companies and SMEs operating in the supply chain.
The investment will comprise £400,000 in grant funding from Scottish Enterprise together with £1.1 million from the private sector. It will support a 17 month project aimed at improving the performance and reliability of existing oil and gas sensory systems.
Gordon Cowie CEO of Raptor Oil Ltd said: “Following two successful proof of concept phases we aim to move into the industrial R&D phase by replicating real life conditions at our purpose built test site in Aberdeen to research and refine our technology. We believe this is a key step in advancing our potentially ground breaking technology to a technology with end user validation and test data evidence derived from simulated and real well environments.”
Richard Erskine, head of Statoil Technology Invest, said: “Statoil believes wireless telemetry has the potential to revolutionize in-well communication and we are delighted to be cooperating with Scottish Enterprise in funding this technology development. Hopefully Raptor is only the first of many such funding opportunities we will cooperate on as we continue to hunt for good ideas across Scotland.”
ConocoPhillips and Statoil have already both provided funding to the firm. Statoil more recently supported the company during a second proof of concept phase through its LOOP funding and is providing a second round of funding towards the research and design phase. This will bring Statoil’s total funding contribution to £850,000.