OREANDA-NEWS.  Sterling Global Operations (SGO) has completed a project for Terraseis, a leading seismic survey contractor that specializes in acquiring land and transition zone surveys in challenging environments, to clear mines and other unexploded ordnance from areas within a 400-square-kilometer section of Kurdistan, Iraq in preparation for oil and gas exploration.

This area of Kurdistan has potential for oil and natural gas production, said Matt Kaye, SGO’s chief executive officer. Terraseis chose SGO for this project because we’ve proven our ability to carry this type of work out successfully and within schedules that enable the client to perform its tasks quickly.

Kurdistan has seen a great deal of warfare, Kaye said, and economic development such as oil and gas exploration can only occur after safety precautions are taken.

In the 1980s Iraq fought an eight-year war with Iran, and since 1991 the U.S. and its coalition partners have conducted Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kaye added. That means high potential for unexploded ordnance in this area, and for the safety of its teams Terraseis chose SGO to find and remove those threats.

The area cleared was located close to the city of Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan, near the Iraq-Iran border about 200 miles northeast of Baghdad, Iraq’s capital city.

Terraseis, headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, provides data acquisition services to international exploration and production companies in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, with its most recent focus in the Middle East.

Sterling Global Operations is an employee-owned stability operations company employing approximately 3,500 professionals worldwide. The company serves customers with munitions response; intelligence support; logistics; security operations and other services in some of the world’s most austere and hostile environments.