WorldwideMedia Contact:
Hilla Barzilai-Abileah
Merrick Systems, Inc.
(713) 579-3400
Hilla.Abileah@merricksystems.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Houston, Texas, October 19, 2010 - In the late 1980s, Samina Farid had already pushed through the glass ceiling. Succeeding in a field overwhelmingly dominated by men, Farid had her feet plated firmly on the highest rungs of the corporate ladder of oil and gas giants. From that altitude, she recognized a big gap in the industrial information technology for the upstream oil and gas industry. And she thought she knew how to fill it.
Farid called on her nephew Kemal Farid, then an electrical engineering student, to begin software to address regulatory compliance and pipeline supply management. In 1992, Samina took a step off the corporate ladder and plunged into business for herself. She and Kemal haven't looked back.
Merrick Systems is now a global business, focusing on solutions that improve production operations, ultimately extending oil- and gas- producing asset life, decreasing lifting cost and increasing production. A market leader in information technologies for the midstream and upstream oil and gas industry, Merrick touches 20 percent of all wells in the U.S. The company has earned numerous prestigious awards and recognitions, including consistent rankings in Houston Business Journal's "Houston Fast 100" and "Fast Tech 50" lists. It has also been counted among Inc.'s 5000 list for seven years, and the company was voted "Most Promising IT Company" and "Most Promising Energy Technology Company" by Rice University's Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship.
Pioneering work by Merrick's innovative multidisciplinary team has helped usher in the era of the Digital Oilfield of the Future. "We know that oil companies have a shortage of tie and staff available for the time-consuming, labor-intensive work needed to harness data that can be used to accomplish better surveillance of the company's assets and to optimize operations. Digital Oilfield technologies enable Merrick's clients to turn information into knowledge, streamline operations management and spend more time improving their core business," explains Kemal, CEO of Merrick.
"With our creative and talented team of engineers, scientists and IT professionals, Merrick capitalizes on the latest technology advances to quickly respond to changing needs," says Samina, the company's chairman. "For example, Merrick's production software solves problems unique to unconventional oil and gas operators in shale areas with a lack of pipeline infrastructure and massive volumes of data to capture, process and report. It handles these tasks with ease and exploits resources previously considered unattainable."
Highly Ruggedized RFID Tracks Assets in Extreme Environments
Merrick's newest innovation is a "game changer" for oil and gas drilling operations. Merrick's patented Radio-frequency identification (RFID) Diamond Tags® are proven to survive the extreme rigors typical of down-hole and subsea oil and gas drilling operations - up to 400° F and 30,000 PSI. Along with Merrick's software, the tags allow immediate operational access to asset location, use and inspection history, physical properties, preventive maintenance schedules, and traceability information required on an asset.
"Most drilling operations dismissed the possibility that RFIDs could ever be made to withstand the high temperatures, high pressures, abrasives, paints, impact, vibration and marine conditions that their high-value equipment is constantly subjected to," says Samina. "We're proving them wrong. And we're not done. Our next-generation, ruggedized RFID tag is raising the bar even further with potential use in other sectors such as defense, marine and space, which operate under similar harsh conditions."
For more information on Merrick Systems please contact us directly.
