HOUSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Feb. 6, 2001

The daily turnover in over-the- counter derivatives was $171bn in the UK in April, almost twice the level of the United States, which ranked second in the survey. The UK figure showed a 131 per cent rise over the past three years as London stretched its lead on rival financial centres.

The Sedco Express continues to progress through the equipment testing and commissioning phase offshore the Canary Islands. The company is currently in discussions with TotalFinaElf and other operators for possible drilling assignments for the rig in West Africa and other regions and believes that current market dayrates for rigs possessing the capabilities of the Sedco Express are in line with the rate that was to have been paid by Elf.

The Bank of England stressed that the derivatives figures were for “off exchange” transactions between institutions and that trading on exchanges such as LIFFE could be as much as “10 times those figures.”

Schlumberger Omnes is a global supplier of mission-critical network and security solutions. It manages and operates one of the world’s largest IP networks, linking key business centers in over 150 countries and is a leading provider of secure managed desktop to desktop data, application and network services for multinational businesses worldwide.

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“In our information-intensive business it was absolutely critical to keep the information networks of both companies up and running during this critical transition stage,”said Schlumberger chief information officer Jean Chevallier. “The new infrastructure was required to maintain the strict security requirements of both Schlumberger and Transocean Sedco Forex.”

The project, which was performed in collaboration with the information technology (IT) department within Transocean Sedco Forex, was completed on an accelerated schedule with minimal disruption to the operations of Transocean Sedco Forex. The new VPN serves more than 50 locations, including remote access from offshore rigs, in 20 countries to reach Transocean Sedco Forex users around the world. Work was begun in September 1999 and concluded in early February 2000. In order to complete the project, the entire Local and Wide Area Network and related services previously used by Sedco Forex were extracted from the Schlumberger Information Network (SINet). A separate, secure, global VPN was created for the new company. The challenge was to accomplish this highly complex transition in a very short time, without disrupting operations of either company.

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