“We have a well-optimization solution that no one else has been able to figure out,”
Sundquist says. Zedi has just finished an 18-month pilot project through two winters during which temperatures fell below –60 C.
Edmonton (Vocus/PRWEB) November 26, 2010
Zedi Inc., a featured innovator at Edmonton Research Park was there with a solution when a natural gas producer in Siberia had trouble with some major gas wells.
The company is already well-known inside the Canadian energy industry, where it provides wellhead data collection, measurement and analysis for more than 40,000 oil and gas wells. Zedi supplies the instrumentation and software that measures nearly half the natural gas produced in Western Canada.
Zedi has grown from a startup in the Edmonton Advanced Technology Centre incubator at Edmonton Research Park in 1987 to a company with 250 employees (and 100 on contract) and annual revenues of roughly $60 million. The 55 employees in the park include 50 professional staff comprising the bulk of the company’s engineers and technicians. The Edmonton technology research company, with its head office now in Calgary, also has offices in Denver, Colo., Fort St. John and Fort Nelson, B.C., and recently opened an office in Grande Prairie. Its name is derived from Japanese and means “pursuit of excellence,” reflecting the ideals of Tokunosuke Ito, the company’s co-founder who plays a continuing role as the company’s chief technology officer.
Zedi focuses on the production phase of oil and gas wells with a suite of services. As
described by Jeffrey Sundquist, vice president of corporate development, “We manage
data from the wellhead to the cash register.”
Instruments at the wellhead use cellular and satellite networks to send data back to the Zedi Inc web host, allowing customers to manage assets from their desktop anywhere there is an Internet connection. Information collected by Zedi is very reliable, auditable and flows between various third-party applications. The sophisticated and secure system ensures that no data is lost, even in the event of communications outages. Other software applications include asset management, field data management and production accounting.
Based at the ERP, Zedi’s services also include field operations (they operate under contract more than 1,000 wells for various producers), production optimization and a relatively new offering of measurement assurance advisory services. The company has followed Canada’s major natural gas producers and service companies as they diversify internationally: It now manages data and controls wells in 23 countries. The company recently made an important breakthrough when it helped a Russian producer tame a prolific but problematic gas field that was costing several million dollars per year in lost production.
“We have a well-optimization solution that no one else has been able to figure out,”
Sundquist says. Zedi has just finished an 18-month pilot project through two winters during which temperatures fell below –60 C.
At home at the Alberta research park, the former incubator company is now a supporter of innovation and putting leading technology in the hands of learners. Through a five-year deal with the Northern Alberta Institute for Technology, Zedi has outfitted three instrumentation labs and donated a SmartSkid flow metering and monitoring system to the petroleum engineering technology program.
“Zedi’s success demonstrates that Edmonton is home to a world-class technology community. The Edmonton Research Park provides a business environment that values technology and progress,” says Candace Brinsmead, Vice President of Technology Advancement at Edmonton Economic Development Corporation, which manages the park.
For more information on the Edmonton Research Park, visit https://www.edmonton.com/edmonton-research-park19.aspx.