U.A.E: Gulmar Offshore Becomes Iremis and Strengthens Its Team

Gulmar Offshore Limited, the international subsea contracting specialist, announced the transformation of its business under the Iremis brand with a strengthened Board and management team focused on becoming a leader in world class subsea IRM (inspection, repair and maintenance) services.

As part of this strategy, Iremis’s only shareholder, Oaktree Capital Management, acquired on July 6th 2012 a 62.5% stake in Integrated Subsea Services Ltd (ISS) to enable the two companies to join forces and serve clients with a broad and complementary range of services. Iremis and the Aberdeen-based company will remain separate entities initially but will be able to develop co-operation and generate further growth in the subsea market segment.

Patrick Chapalain Iremis CEO stated: “This marks a landmark for our company. We have now all the resources, including the support from our shareholder, to play a major role in the subsea market. We are already looking into opportunities to grow our fleet and extend our services to offer our clients a wide range of solutions.”

State of the art vessels

With the delivery in 2011 of two state-of-the-art DP2 Multi-Purpose Diving Support Vessels, the Iremis Atlantis and Iremis Da Vinci, Iremis’s fleet has a solid track record of services and operations in many countries such as Brazil, the North Sea, Africa, South East Asia and the Mediterranean. The company has also a strong and very committed support from a first class technical team.

With the ISS partnership, Iremis will be able to develop new opportunities worldwide as already proven by a recent contract in the North Sea.

Iremis Board and management appointments

Iremis appointed two new members to the Board: Tom Ehret as Chairman and Jean-Luc Laloë as board member. Together, they bring their extensive international industry experience. For over 35 years Tom Ehret has been working in the offshore Oil and Gas Industry in Europe and the USA, with a successful track record of managing international companies, including a major role in the creation and development of Stena Offshore and its subsequent merger with Coflexip, and later with Technip. Tom Ehret then led the successful transformation of Stolt Offshore into Acergy as its CEO. Jean-Luc Laloë spent over 20 years of his career at Technip/Coflexip, working in various executive positions in the USA, the UK, France and Brazil. He was then part of the executive team led by Tom Ehret for the successful corporate turnaround of Stolt Offshore, which was completely redeveloped and became a leader of the high-end offshore engineering and construction sector, before merging with Subsea 7.

The company continues to further strengthen its executive management team. After the appointment of Patrick Chapalain as Chief Executive Officer (formerly with SBM) in 2011, Erwan Le Gall (ex Ernst & Young) joined the Senior Management Team in March 2012 as CFO, while Frederic Fumey (ex Technip) will be appointed as VP of Projects in July and a new VP of Strategy and Sales will complete the executive team in late August.

Partneship with ISS

In order to join forces with Iremis and bring a full breadth of services to clients over time, Iremis’ shareholder Oaktree Capital Management acquired, on 6th of July 2012, 62.5 % of Aberdeen based Integrated Subsea Services Ltd (ISS). ISS is a very successful Diving, ROV and Survey Company created in 2002 by a team of seasoned executives. With an impeccable track record of providing the international Oil and Gas Industry with a broad range of subsea services, including diving services with the highest standards of safety, a modern fleet of 23 ROV’s capable of providing advanced inspection and intervention services in water depths down to 3,000 m, and the highly regarded survey capabilities of Andrews Survey, as well as its own modern air diving and saturation diving equipment, ISS is a clear leader in the market. Whilst most of ISS operations focused on the North Sea, the company has successfully been operating in a number of other geographies including South East Asia, the Caspian Sea or Africa.

Combining ISS and Iremis under the same ownership makes a perfect strategic and operational fit. The clients will benefit from a broader offer of services, while the people will benefit from a larger array of professional opportunities.

Iremis is a specialised subsea and IRM contractor delivering high quality services to the offshore oil and gas industry on both a regional and global basis, led by an experienced team committed to operational excellence and class-leading innovation. Iremis owns a diverse fleet of DP vessels, which have covered regions including Brazil, the North Sea, South East Asia, North and West Africa and the Mediterranean, including the two new built DSVs Iremis Da Vinci and Iremis Atlantis.

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Subsea World News Staff , July 17, 2012; Image: Iremis