Geoplex
Wider scope
A decade after it was first established Geoplex is recognised as the fastest growing indigenous service company in Nigeria today.
During this time the business has provided oilfield services to the upstream sector of Nigeria’s fast expanding oil and gas industry, and that of the surrounding West African coastal countries. This growth has been supported by the NNPC and Nigerian government, whose policies are aimed at encouraging and ensuring more participation by indigenous companies within this market.
Likewise, Geoplex’s emergence as a preferred service provider is due to the extensive experience of its board of directors and management team, which covers provision of measurements and logging whilst drilling, gyro surveys, and electric wireline logging services. In fact wireline applications is where the company first built its reputation, but this has since grown into drilling services, drilling support services including gyro surveys, well testing, tubular inspection and riser maintenance.
“There has been a tremendous increase in the requests for provision of drilling services and this is because a lot of international and multinational oil companies like Shell, Chevron, Agip, Oando, Mart Resources, Waltersmith, Seplat etc. have increased their operations in the country,” describes Geoplex business development manager, Akeem Raji. “In association with this, wireline services have also been in greater demand, as have drilling and well testing.”
Other core parts of Geoplex’s portfolio include the provision of workover services, and the inspection and maintenance of risers and tubulars to ensure smooth operation and minimal failures for companies like Transocean and General Electric. “Jetstream is one of our technical partners for our riser maintenance work,” says Akeem. “They supplied us a 25,000 Psi Hyro-Blasting machine, which is currently used for internal/external cleaning, de-cementation and cleaning of balls for risers we maintain. Jetstream provides excellent technical support for us and this has contributed immensely to the successes we achieved in riser maintenance.”
The company has expanded its manpower offering significantly including labour – both for onshore and offshore contracts, and meet and greet representation, and is now representing on a local level a major OEM dredge manufacturer, Ellicott Dredges in the maintenance and delivery of spare parts.
“One of the ways that we strategically position ourselves is through participation at conferences and exhibitions such as the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in the US, the Nigerian Annual International Conference and Exhibition (NAICE), and Nigeria Oil and Gas Trade and Investment Forum 2012,” explains Akeem. “We use these opportunities to showcase to the world what we have been doing in Nigeria, and what we can do outside the country. It is also a chance for us to look at industry best practice and how we can constantly improve our technology and tools by meeting with OEM partners, and how these can be applied to the local industry.”
He continues: “A major strength of Geoplex is our very strong technical partnerships and relationships with major multinational organisations such as Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, and Haliburton. This means that in situations where we might not be able to deliver to our clients, we can leverage this relationship to provide the required technical support and services.”
For all of its clients Geoplex has endeavoured to provide an excellent level of service quality and delivery. In order to maintain this, the company has put a lot of efforts into continuously improving its performance through training and reviewing its processes and procedures. Safety has also been a key concern to ensure that services are conducted in a safe and efficient manner, which is also significant from an environmental point of view. “Our strengths are certainly our efficiency, safety record, quality, and the fact that we are very responsive to our clients. A lot of our competitors may not be dynamic enough to accommodate changes, whereas we constantly review our processes and manage the operational chains such that we can manage variations in the scope of work, contract, and job delivery,” notes Akeem.
In the last year alone, Geoplex has seen significant upturn in its operations, partly as a result of its wider service portfolio, but also because of a number of new contracts. “Some of these are with customers that we have been working with in the past, and others are with new clients. As such, we have just won three new contracts with Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) for the provision of Electric Line Services, Directional Survey and MWD/LWD Services,” highlights Akeem.
Increasingly becoming a hub for the industry, Nigeria’s oil and gas sector is still expanding in line with the target to increase production rates across the country, which in turn sees new fields coming on-stream. However, the opportunities for Geoplex do not only lie in its home market: “We have been focusing on consolidating and establishing our operations in Nigeria, and positioning ourselves in a strategic way to our clients in the country. As a result we are now looking to diversify further into other African countries that have an oil and gas industry like Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, and Cameroon etc. We have already been successful in this respect in providing services in Ghana, and have also been requested to provide wireline services in partnership with Schlumberger in Cameroon,” concludes Akeem.
Geoplex
Services: Multi-disciplined service provider