Belgium has not been particularly lucky when the North Sea was divided up into sectors belonging to the nations surrounding its coast. No oil or gas has ever been found in the Belgian part of the North Sea. But, that does not mean the country has no oil and gas-related business activity. For instance, Epslog is a well-known name in the sector, with Christophe Germay and his colleagues having a global client portfolio with their core scratch test machines.
Qmineral is another company that is now trying to break into that market. I spoke to Gilles Mertens at the Devex Conference this week, also because it is always interesting to see new companies having a presence on the exhibition floor, particularly the ones that may not have made a big name for themselves in the sector yet.
Gilles founded Qmineral in 2011 and now runs a business that employs 9 people. Their base is in Leuven, Belgium, and the main service is a range of analyses – varying from mineralogy to TOC and SEM on rock and sediment samples.
So, what exactly brought Gilles to Devex?
“We have developed a very compact device that enables people working on rigs to perform XRD clay mineral analysis on the spot”, says Gillles. “This type of analysis is mostly done in the lab, long after the cuttings were taken, but now we’ve got a methodology to find out the clay mineralogy straight away, and fast.”
“A measurement takes around 1.5 minutes”, he says whilst he demonstrates the procedure on the machine that he brought to the conference. “We are in talks with a major operator to roll this out across their drilling operational units and hope to be able to share more news on that soon.”
Qmineral will also be exhibiting at IMAGE in Houston in August.
