A recent deal announced by Spanish E&P firm Repsol YPF and U.S. technology provider 3DGeo Inc. proposes to radically improve subsurface imaging and lower drilling risk. The Kaleidoscope-project partners will focus on joint development of high-level geophysical processing tools and applications, particularly those that radically improve imaging in more complex geology, enable high-resolution velocity modeling, and support wide-azimuth imaging. And they will use one of the world's most powerful supercomputers in that effort. Kaleidoscope marries the MareNostrum supercomputer, operated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), with proprietary algorithms developed by Houston- and Santa Clara, California-based 3DGeo Inc. Repsol YPF is among the world's major integrated companies and 3DGeo is well known in the geophysical community for developing commercial 3-D wave-equation migration algorithms. Great breakthroughs are on the horizon, says Dimitri Bevc, chairman and president of 3DGeo. "This is like the Manhattan project for the oil industry." For more on this, see the January issue of Oil and Gas Investor. For a subscription, call 713-260-6441.