In 1967 the Gulf Oil Company initiated a program to develop technology for locating seeps in the marine environment. By 1974 a fairly sophisticated system had been developed and installed on Gulf's seismic vessel, the R/V Hollis Hedberg. This system, operated by Gulf from 1974 to 1983 was used to collect an extensive "sniffer" geochemical database in the Gulf of Mexico that contains over 191,000 dissolved gas analyses. A detailed evaluation of this database made with respect to discoveries made after the geochemical data was recorded showed that the data was 88 % effective in finding new commercial production. This technology not only has the ability to predict whether a block has hydrocarbon potential, but also whether it is more likely to produce oil or gas, a very important economic factor in the evaluation of offshore blocks. This marine "sniffer" database is now available from Exploration Technologies, Inc.