Fugro has completed the first of three Malaysian seep hunting and geochemical campaigns for the provision of surface geochemical survey for domestic waters for Petronas.

According to Fugro's statement on Friday, the first project, offshore Sabah, Malaysia, began on December 21, 2018, aboard the Fugro Equator vessel, which acquired geophysical data including multibeam echosounder (MBES) and sub-bottom profiler (SBP) data used to interpret geologic features and optimize target selection for geochemical sampling.

Targeted coring operations and shipboard geochemical analyses started on January 6, 2019 aboard the Fugro Equinox vessel and was completed on March 20, 2019.

Over 6,600 square kilometers of MBES data comprised of bathymetry, backscatter intensity, and water column, approximately 2245 line kilometers of SBP data and 281 geochemical cores were acquired. Shipboard geochemical results for headspace gas, total scanning fluorescence and extracted hydrocarbon gas chromatography (C15+) were carried out on more than 550 samples taken from acquired cores.

Regarding the Sabah Project, Dr. Awang Sapawi Awang Jamil, Geochemist for Petronas stated, “The receipt of geochemical analyses from the vessel was very helpful in de-risking our area of interest and in accelerating our project timeline by allowing earlier identification of samples to be sent for advanced geochemical analyses.”

The second seep hunting and geochemical campaign for Petronas began in May 2019 and is taking place offshore Sarawak, Malaysia whereas the third campaign will be focused off the Straits of Malacca, Malaysian peninsula in 4Q 2019.