KUALA LUMPUR, 5th SEPTEMBER 2011 – Asian Geos (“AG”) has recently completed a geotechnical drilling campaign at Bokor field offshore Sarawak with a record depth of 550m below the seabed. The MV Orogenic Geos complete with the drilling rig AG-50 was mobilized for this project in water depth of 70 metres. MV Orogenic Geos is the company’s dedicated geotechnical drilling vessel, purposely built to perform as a geotechnical drilling and survey ship. The AG-50 is a motion-compensated drill rig equipped with a Dando 1000 rotary power swivel rated to 30 tons.
The deep drilling was requested by the Client for geo-mechanic studies and hence apart from the normal drilling, CPT and sampling the scope of works also involved rock coring and hydraulic fracture tests carried out at selected depths.
Ahmad Fikri, AG’s General Manager comments: “Throughout my 22 years of experience in offshore geotechnical industry a 550m of soil drilling using a geotechnical vessel would definitely be a new record. I remember the deep boreholes that were carried out in 1990’s in Vietnam and Indonesia – but nothing was deeper than 500m.”
Immediately after this project, the MV Orogenic Geos was deployed to drill to a 400m of pilot hole also in offshore Sarawak for a different client. However, the drilling was stopped at about 300m due to the shallow gas-kick.
The AG Group has also identified a suitable DP vessel to support its deep water geotechnical surface drilling requirements. The current plan is to have it ready by March 2012