The original research tool has been redeveloped into a commercial product over the past two years with a $NZ220,000 ($A190,300) investment from the Government’s Foundation for Research, Science and Technology pre-seed accelerator fund.

The New Zealand Supercomputing Centre in Wellington had also worked with GNS since the trials of developing Claritas for possible commercial production started a few years ago.

The supercomputer centre – which has also carried out special effects on such films as the trilogy and – is also working with GNS to accelerate the program’s available processing speeds – a critical factor for the oil and gas exploration industry.

The two organisations have a strategic partnership for processing on-demand, enabling users to access software and heavy-duty hardware.

“If users want more power we can supply that, with users able to access the supercomputer centre from anywhere in the world,” GNS business development manager David Darby told Petroleum.

But Claritas is also designed to run on laptop computers in the field, he said.

The revamp of the original 20-year-old software system, and the signing earlier this year of American information technology specialist Stillwater Resource Group as a reseller, have been so successful that the former research tool is now earning well over $1 million a year in revenue for government-owned GNS.

“Although Claritas is not new, there is a resurgence of interest in our software from companies and organisations around the world,” Darby said.

“There’s a shortage of skilled people in the oil industry and intense pressure to find new oil reserves. Companies are going back to old sites and re-processing historical data to see if there is potential worth exploiting and Claritas gives them a clearer picture and delivers results faster.”

Stillwater Resources was now taking the transformed Claritas software, which reconstructs seismic signals into 2D and 3D images down to a depth of 10km, to markets worldwide.

Stillwater chief executive Stacey Horne said Claritas was a robust, flexible and innovative product that had a broad and bright future in the global oil and gas industry.

“There is strong demand for this kind of product from individual geophysicists through to mid-tier companies,” said Horne.

“Houston is a logical springboard for selling Claritas because so many of the world’s big oil explorers have a base there so we can achieve global reach.”

Two years ago there were only 10 users of Claritas, but now 38 organisations of varying sizes from Jordan to Japan use the software suite, with another 11 organisations considering purchasing it, according to Darby.

“All the users are involved in the broader oil and gas sector, from exploration and production companies and consultants, to seismic firms and research institutes,” he said.

Darby declined to name current and potential clients.

He added that GNS could now use the Claritas framework and experience to turn other GNS research products into commercial systems.