Petroleum Geo-Services ASA (“PGS” or the “Company”) (OSE and NYSE: PGS) has introduced as a regular routine to report vessel utilization around the end of each quarter and announced today that its seismic vessel fleet used approximately 50% of its total time to acquire marine contract seismic in the third quarter of 2006. This compares to 78% in the second quarter of 2006 and 73% in the third quarter of 2005.
In the third quarter of 2006, PGS experienced a gear break-down on one of the main thrusters on Ramform Victory. Since the vessel was operating on a remote location offshore Sakhalin and had to steam to Japan for repair, approximately 30 days of production was lost. The vessel is now steaming back to Sakhalin.