OSLO, Norway, June 9, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- PGS has experienced weaker than planned vessel production in its Marine segment in May and early June. For that reason, PGS has adjusted its guidance somewhat for the full year 2008. The year on year growth in marine contract revenues is expected to be approximately 75% with a corresponding EBIT margin expected to be approximately 50%.
The reduced productivity relates primarily to weather downtime on a project offshore India caused by early start of the monsoon season. Further, two streamer incidents have contributed to the deviation in productivity.
In addition Q2 vessel utilization is impacted by vessel steaming activity with a record number of vessels moving to the North Sea and two vessels moving from India to East Asia.
For Onshore, second quarter is expected to be the seasonally weakest quarter in 2008, which is in accordance with earlier communication that market activity in second half 2008 is expected to be higher.
Despite the deviations in marine productivity, which will be fully accounted for in the quarter, PGS expects to report its strongest Q2 ever and its third strongest quarterly EBIT ever as a pure geophysical company.
The vessel allocation information for Q2 2008 will be released as planned at around the end of the quarter.
As previously announced PGS will release its 2008 second quarter financial results on Friday, July 25, 2008, at approximately 8:00 am Central European Time (CET).
Petroleum Geo-Services is a focused geophysical company providing a broad range of seismic and reservoir services, including acquisition, processing, interpretation, and field evaluation. The company also possesses the world's most extensive multi-client data library. PGS operates on a worldwide basis with headquarters at Lysaker, Norway.For more information on Petroleum Geo-Services visit www.pgs.com.
The information included herein contains certain forward-looking statements that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects, projects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future. These statements are based on various assumptions made by the Company, which are beyond its control and are subject to certain additional risks and uncertainties. The Company is subject to a large number of risk factors including but not limited to the demand for seismic services, the demand for data from our multi-client data library, the attractiveness of our technology, unpredictable changes in governmental regulations affecting our markets and extreme weather conditions. For a further description of other relevant risk factors we refer to our Annual Report for 2007. As a result of these and other risk factors, actual events and our actual results may differ materially from those indicated in or implied by such forward-looking statements.