NCSA NEWS

Shell Oil Company Joins NCSA's Industrial Program

released 10.16.96

 

Contact Information
Karen Green
Public Information Officer
kareng@ncsa.uiuc.edu
217.265.0748 phone
217.265.0460 fax

CHAMPAIGN, IL. - The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced today (Oct. 16) that Shell Oil Co. has joined the center's Industrial Program.

The initial 12-month agreement adds Shell to a group of 15 industry leaders partnering with NCSA to help increase U.S. industrial competitiveness. NCSA's other industrial partners are Allstate Insurance Co.; American Airlines; AT&T; Caterpillar Inc.; Dow Chemical Co.; Eastman Kodak Co.; Eli Lilly & Co.; FMC; J.P. Morgan; Motorola Inc.; Phillips Petroleum Co.; Schlumberger; Sears, Roebuck and Co.; Tribune Co.; and United Technologies.

Shell Oil, based in Houston, is one of the largest petroleum refiners and crude-oil and natural-gas producers in the United States. The company's 1995 revenues were $24.7 billion and they employ more than 21,000 people in the United States. The company searches for, develops, purchases, transports, and markets crude oil and natural gas. It also manufactures, purchases, transports, and markets oil and chemical products. The majority of Shell Oil's U.S. production of crude oil is from California, West Texas, the Gulf of Mexico and along the Gulf Coast. Natural-gas production is concentrated in South Texas, Michigan and along the Gulf Coast. At the end of 1995, Shell Oil had crude reserves of more than 1.5 billion barrels.

"We are excited about adding a leading petroleum company to NCSA's industrial program," said Larry Smarr, NCSA director. "Shell Oil has been a leader in using supercomputer technology to do seismic research that has led to major advances in deep-water oil discovery and production.

NCSA will help them apply many of the evolving leading-edge high-performance computing and information technologies to their expanding need to extract more knowledge from their huge databases in all aspects of their businesses."

"Shell Oil is pleased to be joining the highly successful Industrial Program at NCSA," said Merle Bone, general auditor and chief information officer. "We believe NCSA's leading edge technology base and directions will aid our current growth objectives. Areas of special interest to us include shared-memory supercomputing architectures, data visualization and analysis, and network center computing structures. We look forward to a highly interactive partnership with NCSA and the other Industrial Partners."

"Shell Oil's commitment to competitive growth and research is impressive," said John Stevenson, NCSA corporate officer and head of the Industrial Program. "They are well-positioned to meet their growth objectives. Their technology needs combined with NCSA's knowledge base will make this a beneficial partnership for Shell Oil, the University, and NCSA."

NCSA, a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is dedicated to advancing leading-edge technologies in information and high-performance computing and communications in academia and industry. The center receives major funding support from the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA, NCSA's corporate partners, the state of Illinois, and the University of Illinois.  
 
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