StorageAlliance Steps on Gas

Beleaguered storage service provider (SSP) StorageAlliance has thrown in the towel on the storage utility model and hired a new CEO to help it shift direction.

Todd Chukry replaces Jeff Ascah as chief executive officer. Ascah will stay on as president and chairman of the company.

Prior to joining StorageAlliance, Chukry was head of business development for Request Seismic, a firm that brokers the sale of seismic research to oil and gas companies. He built this organization into the multimillion-dollar company it is today, according to StorageAlliance spokespeople.

Which explains why StorageAlliance has hired him. He’s on a one-year deal to help us with strategic planning,” says Ken Akerley, vice president for business development at StorageAlliance.

It also explains the SSP’s change in direction. It is already based in Calgary, Alberta (the Houston of Canada) and therefore well situated to service the oil and gas industry. With Chukry’s contacts it plans to sell data management services to all the oil and gas companies in the area.TransCanada PipeLines

and PanCanadian Petroleum are both said to be interested in StorageAlliance’s new services, but nothing has been signed yet.

“We are also looking into purchasing seismic data and remarketing this information to other oil and gas companies and geophysicists,” says Akerley. It sounds like the company might be heading down the same road as Chukry’s previous company, Request-Seismic.

”Yes and no,” says Akerley. Via partnerships with different ASPs, such as GeoSystems, he says the company also plans to sell software interpretation tools for companies producing seismic data.

Meanwhile, StorageAlliance is in desperate need of more funding, having received $750,000 from DKJ Technologies over a year ago. The company is only 10 employees strong, so it may be able to come through the SSP slump where others with larger costs are in serious trouble (see Sanrise Wakes Up). Time will tell.

”We are working on the funding and hope to go public in the near future,” says Akerley.Easy! One seismic shift at a time, dude.

— Jo Maitland, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch
http://www.byteandswitch.com