Siri Kalvig, a meteorologist, cofounded StormGeo in 1997 in Bergen, western Norway, to provide the private sector with weather forecasts. It soon grew into forecasting the consequences of daily weather patterns to the oil and gas sector, aviation and shipping, among other sectors. Today, the company has 23 offices in 15 countries, including the UAE, UK, Sweden, Denmark, US and Azerbaijan. Ms Kalvig, 44, now a partner at StormGeo and also pursuing a doctoral degree in offshore wind technology at the University of Stavanger, was at Insead business school’s Abu Dhabi campus last month to deliver a lecture on her industry. Here the weather expert, along with the meteorologist Daniel Mathew, the regional director of StormGeo in the Middle East, reveal more about the business of weather forecasting. Mr Mathew started the weather forecasting company Met Consultancy in Dubai in 2004. StormGeo acquired it in 2011.
Why did you launch a weather forecasting company?
Siri Kalvig: When I started it, it was in the early days of the internet and there were no mobile phones. People got their weather from TV, radio and newspapers. Even then people thought that “I am getting weather information for free from the media, so why are you doing it?” But I knew there was so much about weather I wanted to share with the industry and I was passionate about weather. So, we started our own forecasting so that we could dig into the details. Innovation is linked to passion, and my passion is geophysics. At the University of Bergen, I was a cloud observer at night. In 1992, Norway launched its first commercial TV station, TV2. I applied for a job and became the first woman weather presenter. Later I used this position to start StormGeo. Norway had deregulated the power industry in 1991, and I saw that my evening TV shows were affecting the prices in the power exchange. With StormGeo we started doing our own weather forecasts. It wasn’t received very well. The Met institute said it was a “weather war”.
How has the business changed?
SK: We made a natural progression to forecasting the consequences of the weather. We are now starting a new project on algae monitoring to find out about oil spills, and this will help us move from offline sampling to continuous, real-time monitoring of the ocean and environment.
What does StormGeo exactly forecast?
SK: For oil and gas companies, for instance, we forecast how an offshore rig will move during certain weather conditions, or how long will it take a vessel to travel from one place to another. We also have the ability to forecast fog. In 2002, a company that started drilling for oil in a small island called Melkøya [in northern Norway] asked us to find situations where the wind is less than 10 metres per second, ocean swell is less than 10 centimetres, and the conditions will stay for 24 hours.
Daniel Mathew: Most of our clients in the UAE are offshore oil and gas operators, whereas in Saudi Arabia we also service over 100 onshore drilling rigs, usually operating in remote hostile desert environments. For these onshore rigs, StormGeo is able to track developing sandstorms through our network of weather stations and give our clients an early warning of these storms.
What was the initial investment?
SK: I invested 100,000 Norwegian krones (Dh60,000) from my personal savings and owned 10 per cent of the company. TV2 invested 1 million Norwegian krones and owned the rest of the stake. I started by selling the weather data to two power traders, TV2 and VG, a Norwegian newspaper. I worked alone for the first few months and then hired around 10 people. Now we have 400 people working for us.
What clients do you have in this part of the world?
DM: Locally, it is a mix of government and private sector. We have Bahrain TV, Qatar TV and Sky News Arabia in the media sector; Dubai Petroleum, Shell and BP in the oil and gas; and airlines and helicopter operators for the oil and gas sector as clients. We have 150 clients here. We have access to 50 weather stations in the Middle East – some operated by the companies and some by us through joint ventures with the companies. They all report to our met office in Dubai Media City.
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