New Records Achieved by HELMS in Offshore Australia

Exmouth, 2 May 2019 – New Seabed CPT records achieved by Helms Geomarine Sdn Bhd (Helms) in offshore Browse, Northwest Australia. A follow on project with Neptune Geomatics for a leading energy company, the team managed to achieve actual penetration of 20 meters below seabed, operating in up to 550 meters of water depth and performing 143 number of Seabed CPT points.

The crew operating from a state-of-the-art catamaran vessel, was met with significant environmental challenges this time with 12-meter cyclones and strong underwater current. However the vessel, capable of achieving up to 22 knots cruising speed was able to seek shelter ahead of the cyclones whenever necessary.

In ensuring Class 1 data accuracy especially since the soils encountered are soft clays, Helms dedicated a senior geologist and a senior geotechnical engineer to provide QAQC on the offsets reading and raw data as well as production of the CPT Logs.

Apart from Seabed CPT, the team also performed Neptune Geomatics’ box corer and piston corer with an experienced laboratory technician from Helms leading the coring operation. An underwater camera was utilized as part of the operation to ensure safe and reliable deployment, operation and retrieval of the equipment. The team was also joined by scientists who carried out seawater sampling for water column profiling.

Special Operations Manager, Nazrin Ridhwan said “Operating a seabed CPT equipment is not only challenging operationally, but also the ability to interpret anomalies from the data such as cone tilting, rod bending as well as interpretation of soft soil layers. With a number projects already performed in different project areas, we are now confident to go into deeper water where soft soils most likely will be encountered.”

The seabed CPT team and equipment is currently on standby in Australia for further upcoming projects anticipated ahead.