INDUSTRY

Silicon Graphics Systems (India) Pvt Ltd and Intel Technology India Pvt Ltd today announced the deployment of a 10 Itanium 2 processor-based SGI Altix 350 server at BG Exploration & Production India Limited (BGEPIL), which is a business of BG India. BG India has been active in India's oil and gas sector for more than 10 years and is part of the BG Group -- a leading international energy company. The new system will be used to simulate gas deposits miles below the earth's surface, thereby providing BGEPIL timely access to data needed for its oil exploration and production planning. The Altix system, equipped with ten processors, 20GB of memory and almost half a terabyte of local disk capacity, will also allow BGEPIL to reduce simulation-processing time and optimize decisions related to drilling and acquisition of assets within new areas. BGEPIL has installed the system as part of the company's upcoming reservoir development program. Mr. David Wohlshlegel, Managing Director, BGEPIL said, "India is one of BG Group's six core geographic areas of operation. This solution will help BGEPIL further enhance India's domestic energy production to address the country's growing energy needs. We chose the SGI Altix system because we were convinced of SGI's vision for scalable Intel Itanium 2 processor-based systems, its proven expertise in oil and gas, and its commitment to 64-bit Linux." Dr. Prasad Medury, Managing Director, Silicon Graphics Systems (India) Pvt Ltd. added, "The powerful Intel Itanium 2-based Altix 350 will deliver to BGEPIL, a truly high performance system that will enhance their productivity for applications in reservoir simulation and seismic analysis." "The oil and gas industry in India has witnessed significant growth and hence an exponential surge in data in the last few years and leading players in this space are turning to innovative IT solutions to analyze data for faster and more precise exploration decisions and to differentiate themselves. Intel expects the faster adoption of IT in Indian manufacturing to continue and has been working with leading technology providers like SGI to ensure availability of tried and tested solutions on Intel architecture," says Shrikant Patil, Director Solutions, Intel Technology India Pvt. Ltd. The industry has relied upon Linux OS and open standards-based platforms to achieve its upstream business objectives of discovering, accessing, and developing oil assets at the lowest possible cost. The adoption of Intel Itanium 2 processor-based platform running in a Linux environment at BGEPIL is an endorsement of this technology. After conducting various benchmarks, the application software was seen to exhibit improved performance on Linux as compared to the UNIX operating system. SGI Altix Family Scales Up and Out The SGI Altix system architecture handles large data sets with ease, helping to enable customers to achieve groundbreaking improvements in life sciences, manufacturing, oil and gas exploration, homeland security, earth and environmental sciences research. The Altix system has consistently set numerous records for sheer performance, and for its ability to efficiently run manufacturing, engineering and scientific applications across hundreds of processors in a Linux operating environment. With best in class price, performance, and price/performance ratio, the mid-range SGI Altix 350 system scales from 1 to 16 Itanium 2 processors and up to 192GB of memory per node. Hundreds of nodes can be clustered together over both standard Gigabit Ethernet or SGI's new 10 Gigabit Ethernet option, or via the leading price-performance interconnect, InfiniBand. Background: BG India is one of the largest foreign investors in India's oil and gas sector. In February 2004, BG Group, the parent company, announced in a presentation to shareholders and analysts, that India is a target country in which the Group intended to focus, invest and grow its business. BG India holds 30 per cent interests in the Panna/Mukta oil and gas fields and the Tapti gas field, through its 100 percent owned subsidiary, BG Exploration & Production India Limited (BGEPIL). About 200 employees work in the offshore fields and at offices in Mumbai, New Delhi and at a supply base in Bhavnagar, which supports exploration, development and production activities for the fields. In 2003, the combined production from the Panna/Mukta and Tapti fields was about 68,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, which is about seven per cent of India's total oil and gas production. In the Transmission and Distribution (T&D) business, the Group envisages that BG India's interests in the natural gas distribution companies, Gujarat Gas Company Limited and Mahanagar Gas Limited, will contribute substantially to the Company's T&D growth ambitions. Gujarat Gas and Mahanagar Gas currently supply natural gas to over 450,000 customers in Mumbai and Gujarat. In addition to its interests in the oil and gas industry in India, BG India also provides high-speed broadband internet connection, internet telephony and virtual private networks to customers in Surat, Ahmedabad and Vadodara in Gujarat, and in Mumbai, Chennai and Vizag, via Iqara Broadband, a 100 per cent owned subsidiary.