Allseas Group S.A. is a Swiss-based offshore contractor specialising in pipelay, heavy lift and subsea construction. It was founded in 1985 by owner and president Edward Heerema, employs 4,000 people and operates worldwide.
The company is headquartered in
Châtel-Saint-Denis
Châtel-Saint-Denis (; frp, Châtél, locally ''Tsathi'' , or ''Châtél-Sent-Denis'', locally ''Tsathi-Chin-Dèni'') is a municipality and district capital of the district of Veveyse in the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland.
Geography
Châte ...
, Switzerland. It also owns a subsidiary, Allseas Engineering B.V., based in the
Netherlands
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with offices in
Delft
Delft () is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. It is located between Rotterdam, to the southeast, and The Hague, to the northwest. Together with them, it is part of both the Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan ...
,
Eindhoven
Eindhoven () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the southern province of North Brabant of which it is its largest. With a population of 238,326 on 1 January 2022,Enschede, which provides project management and engineering services to the group. The company also operates project and engineering offices out of Australia,
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
and the USA.
Allseas operates a versatile fleet of specialised heavy-lift, pipelay and subsea installation vessels. The company has installed over 20,000 km of subsea pipeline worldwide using S-lay technology, with diameters ranging from 2 to 48 inches. Allseas launched its first vessel ''Lorelay'', the world's first pipelay vessel to operate on full dynamic positioning, in 1986. It also owns ''
Pioneering Spirit
''Pioneering Spirit'' (formerly ''Pieter Schelte'') is a catamaran crane vessel owned by the Switzerland-based Allseas Group designed for the single-lift installation and removal of large oil and gas platforms and the installation of record-we ...
'', the world's largest construction vessel, designed for the single-lift installation and removal of large oil and gas platforms and the installation of record-weight pipelines.
History
Allseas was founded in January 1985 by Edward Heerema, son of the late Pieter Schelte Heerema, founder of the Dutch offshore construction and installation company Heerema Marine Contractors. Offices subsequently opened in
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a list of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's ad ...
,
Netherlands
)
, anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, subdivision_type = Sovereign state
, subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands
, established_title = Before independence
, established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
and
Châtel-Saint-Denis
Châtel-Saint-Denis (; frp, Châtél, locally ''Tsathi'' , or ''Châtél-Sent-Denis'', locally ''Tsathi-Chin-Dèni'') is a municipality and district capital of the district of Veveyse in the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland.
Geography
Châte ...
, Switzerland.
The company spent its early days developing the concept of dynamically positioned (DP) subsea pipelay. Allseas acquired the former bulk carrier ''Natalie Bolten'' in 1985 and converted it for DP pipelay at the Boele shipyard in Bolnes, the Netherlands. The vessel was christened ''Lorelay'' in Rotterdam on 26 April 1986. ''Lorelay'' immediately entered service and successfully executed her first pipelay contract, the 8-inch, 1.8-km Helder A-B pipeline, for
Unocal
Union Oil Company of California, and its holding company Unocal Corporation, together known as Unocal was a major petroleum explorer and marketer in the late 19th century, through the 20th century, and into the early 21st century. It was headqu ...
in the Dutch sector of the North Sea.
In 2007, Allseas announced plans to build a twin-hulled platform installation / decommissioning and pipelay vessel. At 382 m long and 124 m wide, the vessel would be the largest ever built. It was to be named ''Pieter Schelte'' after the offshore pioneer Pieter Schelte Heerema, father of Allseas’ owner and founder Edward Heerema, however this naming caused controversy with some politicians and Jewish groups due to Pieter's previous service in the
Waffen-SS
The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with volunteers and conscripts from both occupied and unoccupied lands.
The grew from th ...
during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, for which he was jailed for three years after the war. In February 2015, Allseas stated that the ship would be renamed ''
Pioneering Spirit
''Pioneering Spirit'' (formerly ''Pieter Schelte'') is a catamaran crane vessel owned by the Switzerland-based Allseas Group designed for the single-lift installation and removal of large oil and gas platforms and the installation of record-we ...
''.
A criminal trial in the UK in 2016 revealed that Allseas were victims of a multi-million pound fraud. In 2011, they invested £73 million with investors led by Luis Nobre claiming to have links to the Vatican and Spanish nobility.
In 2018, Allseas announced its intention to build an even larger version of ''Pioneering Spirit'', named ''Amazing Grace'', which is scheduled to be delivered in 2022. However, in July 2020, Allseas announced that it would suspend the project indefinitely.
Fleet
The company owns several vessels which are used for its offshore construction activities.