Petroconsultants was an oil and gas exploration and scouting information company formed in 1968 in

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaki ...

to take over the activities of Harry Wassall and Associates, which was founded in

Havana Havana (; Spanish: ''La Habana'' ) is the capital and largest city of Cuba. The heart of the La Habana Province, Havana is the country's main port and commercial center.

in 1956. Petroconsultants collected information about oil and gas wells and fields from around the world and published this information in various forms. Oil companies purchased this information as a means of keeping up with competitors and, in return, donated information they wished known publicly; information also came from local agents of Petroconsultants. Petroconsultants was also a major producer of maps and initiated the first commercial global digital map project,

Geodat Geodat was a commercial project, begun in 1980 and completed by 1991, that provided digital geographic mapping data for commercial users at scales equal to or greater than 1:1,000,000. The term "Geodat" was derived from "GEOgraphic DATa". Geodat da ...

in 1980. At its peak in the 1980s, Petroconsultants had some 200 major clients and offices in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

and

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

. Over the years, Petroconsultants published hundreds of reports and employed hundreds of people. Notably, Petroconsultants was an early developer of computerized oil well and field databases and also of computerized cartography. Petroconsultants was acquired by IHS in 1996 and largely has been absorbed into that business.

References

{{Reflist Oil and gas companies of Switzerland