Raptor Oil receives £1.5m ‘Seek and Solve’ investment

Aberdeen based start-up Raptor Oil has secured £1.5 million funding through the new Seek & Solve innovation funding programme.

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The project is the first to receive funding through the programme launched last year.

Gordon Cowie CEO of Raptor Oil Ltd said “Following two successful proof of concept phases we aim to move into the industrial R&D phase by replicating real life conditions at our purpose built test site in Aberdeen to research and refine our technology. We believe this is a key step in advancing our potentially ground breaking technology to a technology with end user validation and test data evidence derived from simulated and real well environments.”

Raptor, which has developed wireless data communication tool for use in wells, has secured £400,000 from Scottish Enterprise as well as £1.1 million from the private sector, including from Statoil.

Scottish Enterprise chief executive, Lena Wilson, said “Today’s announcement marks a significant milestone for Seek & Solve with the first project to be awarded since we launched the programme. We are encouraging many more companies, like Raptor Oil, to deliver projects of this nature which result not just in commercial success for each organisation but help increase exports and Scotland’s overall competitiveness.

“In the last year alone we’ve helped more than £6.13 million worth of innovation projects within oil and gas supply chain companies and supported key projects such as the new Oil and Gas Innovation Centre. Investing in innovation in this sector is vital to its long term future and we intend to do as much as possible to stimulate that in the coming years.”

Richard Erskine, head of Statoil Technology Invest, said “Statoil believes wireless telemetry has the potential to revolutionise in-well communication and we are delighted to be cooperating with Scottish Enterprise in funding this technology development. Hopefully Raptor is only the first of many such funding opportunities we will cooperate on as we continue to hunt for good ideas across Scotland.”

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