With the opening of a new office in Kuala Lumpur, Subiaco-based DownUnder GeoSolutions is well placed to win more work in the Malaysian and South-East Asian markets.
With the opening of a new office in Kuala Lumpur, Subiaco-based DownUnder GeoSolutions is well placed to win more work in the Malaysian and South-East Asian markets.
The company, which offers a range of exploration and production services to the global oil and gas industry, opened its new office on January 20.
DownUnder GeoSolutions managing director Matthew Lamont said the company had formed an alliance in Kuala Lumpur with Petroleum Geo-Solutions (PGS) – a worldwide geophysical services provider – with the two sharing the same office.
“We complement PGS since they don’t provide quantitative interpretation services in the region while we do,” Mr Lamont said. “We visited Singapore, Vietnam and Myanmar and we’ve completed jobs in most of those places now but Kuala Lumpur was the place where we were getting consistent work.
“We’ve been doing well paid work in Malaysia for the last twenty months but as soon as we opened an office there … the reception to our company was warmer.
“People really do want companies that have an office there and which are based in the region.”
Mr Lamont said the company had three staff based in Kuala Lumpur including two Australian geophysicists and an office manager. He said more than 80 per cent of DownUnder’s work had come from overseas markets including the Gulf of Mexico and Myanmar, illustrating the company’s export focus.
“We are starting to do more domestic work now,” he said. “[However] big companies are more willing to give you a go if you are a new kid on the block up there [Southeast Asia] than they are in Australia.”
Mr Lamont told WA Business News DownUnder had developed a relationship with American-based company Murphy Oil in Kuala Lumpur.
“[Murphy Oil] has been our main client in Southeast Asia,” he said. “We mainly do reservoir and geophysics type work for them.
“We have also got several projects with Petronas both in Pakistan and Vietnam and a tender we are waiting on is with Carigali Triton Operating Company (CTOC).
Mr Lamont envisages Indonesia as the next country DownUnder would look to expand into with the company possibly setting up an office in Jakarta in the near future.
DownUnder was established in 2004 and has more than 20 employees, half involved in research and development and the others involved in the services side of the business.
