HELMS Completed its First Drilling Campaign in UAE
Abu Dhabi, 11 February 2019 – The drilling and CPT team of Helms Geomarine Sdn Bhd (HELMS) completed its first geotechnical drilling campaign from the geotechnical vessel MV Pioneer today for a state-owned oil corporation after weeks of rig installation and preparations. The Malaysian-flagged MV Pioneer, on charter to NPCC, is an 82m long DP2 vessel built in 2011 with over 700 sq.m of clear deck space. She is now equipped with a motion–compensated marine drill rig and an APVDB CPT system which is being provided by HELMS under a 2-year agreement with NPCC.
The current crew will remain onboard until the 3rd week of February 2019, after which another set of replacement team will take over for the subsequent NPCC project in Saudi Arabia.
Managing Director, Dato’ Helmi Zulkawi said: “We used to own a UAE-based company which performed some drilling works in offshore Abu Dhabi in 2015. This new project marks the re-entry of the HELMS group into the Middle-east market and I hope this will present us with more opportunities to participate in projects focusing on its core competence which is the offshore geotechnical drilling and engineering services.”
HELMS, the previous co-owner of Asian Geos Sdn Bhd, is now a full-fledged offshore geotechnical investigation company based in Kuala Lumpur with past and ongoing offshore geotechnical investigation projects in Taiwan, Korea and Southeast Asia. It operates a 60m geotechnical vessel called the Patra Offshore which to-date has a track record of drilling nearly 50 offshore boreholes.