KUALA LUMPUR, 15TH AUGUST 2013 – This month, Asian Geos (“AG”) celebrates its ten-year anniversary as the regional leading provider of offshore geotechnical investigation and geophysical site survey services. From its humble beginnings way back in 2003, AG has grown leaps and bounds over the decades, in tandem with its continuous investment in strategic assets and human capital and the oil and gas development.
Group Managing Director Dato’ Helmi Zulkawi said, “When I started AG I knew we had a great potential, but I could never have expected that the company can grow to this size within a span of 10 years, operating over 8 vessels, 4 of which are owned by the company. AG has also grown from a team of a few employees to nearly 300 employees today. Most of our employees are Malaysians and yet our people have been involved in offshore geotechnical and survey projects not only at home and SEA but also in Europe, South America and Australia”
To compete on a global basis and provide an increased level of service depth within the local and regional markets particularly in deep water, Asian Geos has in 2011 teamed up with Gardline Geosciences Limited, United Kingdom.
Dato’ Helmi said that the JV agreement was a strategic decision which stemmed from AG’s aspirations to expand its deep water operations capabilities and realise its long-term plans of further enhancing its service offering in Malaysia and around the world.
The strategic cooperation with the UK partner has seen a further rapid expansion of AG especially in the area of deep water site investigation. Having performed a deep water site investigation in 2011 in offshore Sabah using a third party vessel, AG will have its own deep water capability soon when it completes the upgrading of its vessel to DP2 and the modifications of the drill rig GL-75 to enable the unit to be used with DP2 Geoasia to handle up to 1800 metres of drill pipes.
A brand new geotechnical drilling vessel called AG Geodrill will also be delivered by October 2013. This shallow draft vessel will be fitted with a motion-compensated drilling rig with complete with a Dando DK1000 power swivel capable of handling up to 1000m of drill pipes – although most of the time she would be mainly used to undertake shallow water geotechnical drilling and sampling works in the Arab Gulf.
In the area of geophysical survey, within last 2 years, AG has successfully rigged up two complete spreads of 2D high resolution site survey vessels. One of the vessels will be permanently be assigned to carry out site surveys for Petronas Carigali for whom AG has been recently awarded with a long-term contract. The other vessel will be flagged and stationed in Indonesia to meet with the demand for a mandatory locally registered survey vessel.
Dato’ Helmi expressed optimism for the future expansion of AG and hoped that with continuing support from the Malaysian Government and AG’s existing clients especially PETRONAS Carigali, the company would be able to further build on its existing capabilities to become a recognized global player for offshore geotechnical and site survey services.