IHS Group Acquires Petroleum Information/Dwights LLC

Information Handling Services Group Inc., (Englewood, Colo.) a leading international information database publishing group, has acquired Petroleum Information/Dwights LLC (Houston, Texas).

The result of a recently completed merger of Petroleum Information Corp. and Dwights' Energydata Inc., PI/Dwights is the leading source of information on oil and gas production and well history data across North America and in the North Sea.

PI/Dwights' proprietary databases incorporate vast amounts of information from more than 2.9 million oil and gas wells and constitute by far the largest, most complete, data repositories of their kind. Most major and independent oil companies active in the U.S., Canada and the North Sea rely on PI/Dwights' databases to identify drilling locations, and to track oil and gas leases, drilling and production activities, and their competition.

PI/Dwights is also a leading provider of value-added database services and related software solutions to the oil and gas industry. Michael J. Timbers, chairman and CEO of IHS Group, described the acquisition of PI/Dwights as a "natural extension of IHS Group's acquisition last year of Petroconsultants, the leading supplier of information on oil and gas exploration and production activities outside of PI/Dwight's core North American markets."

As a result of these two acquisitions, energy information represents IHS Group's second largest revenue stream, after its engineering information businesses.

PI/Dwights and Petroconsultants share strong sales and operating synergies. Where appropriate, each company will develop database products across common software platforms, enabling customers active in several geographic markets to manage, evaluate and exploit all exploration and production information from a single solution. Both companies will also cross-sell each others' data products and services, combining common sales operations in Houston and the UK.

IHS Group is a leading international publisher of electronic information databases, with annual sales of $440 million. Its individual operating companies all serve the information needs of customers across the world's technical, business and professional sectors.