Upstream oil software developer SMT has announced that it has penned a deal with the Indian Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) to provide its full Kingdom suite of geoscientific interpretation software.

The company insisted that the ONGC's upstream subsea operations could be significantly enhanced by the software, which will also provide backwards compatibility with legacy software systems.

"ONGC's decision to commit to a multi-year agreement for SMT software and services demonstrates that Kingdom is an excellent fit for large, international national oil companies," said Arshad Matin, president and chief executive officer of SMT.

As part of the agreement, SMT will provide training for 200 geoscientists in how to utilise the software to find oil and gas deposits more quickly.

SMT also noted that because Kingdom is Windows-based, ONGC workers will be able to benefit from expanded remote learning capabilities not present in Unix-based suites.

In May 2008, the company also entered into an agreement with Petroleum Agency SA to deploy Kingdom for use in upstream operations in the Orange Basin, a deepwater field off the coast of Africa.

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