Edward Heerema

Edward Heerema (born 1947 ) is a Dutch engineer, businessman and he was the sole owner of Allseas, a major offshore oil business company. The company is now run by his son Pieter. Through Allseas, he was the owner of the largest ship in the world, the pipe-layer Pioneering Spirit.

Early life Edward Heerema was born in 1947 to He spent his childhood in Venezuela where his father, after service in the Waffen-SS, had exiled himself after World War II and worked as an engineer in Maracaibo. During his stay at the HMC company, he was put in charge of the research and development department. After his father died in 1981, he and his brothers took care of HMC for some years, of a dynamically positioned pipe-laying ship by 1986, the Lorelay. Heerema is the sole owner of Allseas and lays importance to the independence of the company's engineering projects. The company has its own engineering department, and doesn't outsource its engineering projects. The project of an off shore platform decommissioning ship like Pioneering Spirit has been developed since 1987 and its building was initiated in 2011. The Pioneering Spirit finally took up work in 2016.

Allseas scam trial Edward Heerema was also targeted by the fraudster Paul Sultana, who persuaded him to agree to deliver £88m through Allseas, which would be placed in an investment which promised very high returns. Heerema initiated a private prosecution after the British courts initially refused to condemn Paul Sultana due to lack of evidence. But as he became aware what an impact it had for the victims of nazi actions, he agreed to rename it Pioneering Spirit.

Awards On April 12, 2016, he was awarded a Fellow Chartership of Engineer by the Royal Netherlands Society of Engineers (KIVI). Heerema was the first and only one at the time to have received this title in the Netherlands.