Tag Archives: offshore drilling

Tuesday was a day of dichotomy for the notion of operational scale in offshore drilling. Even as one drilling contractor paid penance for scale bought long ago, two others ignited the next round of consolidation, extolling the virtues of operational scale in this disaggregated sector. Taken together, these two news items …

If deepwater rig demand were to begin its ascent today, it would be met with a glut of rigs that would render the impact on dayrates, and indeed contractor bottom lines, relatively impotent. If more rigs aren’t removed from the structural oversupply before demand moves higher, drilling contractors are at risk …

Earnings season begins Friday morning. Here’s our cheat sheet of just the most important themes and trends to listen for as management teams discuss the outlook. We’ve broken down the cheat sheet by US onshore E&P, majors, completion service providers, frac sand miners, onshore drilling, offshore drilling, and diversified oilfield services, …

Thanks in part to the renewed exploration push in the UK, Transocean just announced two new contracts for the Transocean Spitsbergen (a 2009-built UDW HDHE semi) for Statoil drilling programs. The dayrate is near break-even, but that’s the least interesting thing about these contract awards… Digging deeper, a $27mm difference in the contract …

As Upstreamonline first reported and we discussed last week, Norwegian startup Borr Drilling has been sniffing around Transocean’s jackup fleet. On Monday, Borr Drilling put out a press release confirming the reports. The company says it has signed an LOI with Transocean for the purchase of 15 jackups. Transocean has not released …

Reports out late-last week suggested two significant offshore drilling M&A deals were in the making. One of the deals was confirmed Monday morning. The two deals are spearheaded separately by former partners John Fredriksen and Tor Olov Troim. Fredriksen’s deal is deepwater, Troim’s is a shallow water play. John Fredriksen …

At this point, we see field development as a marketplace in the very early stages of turning around. As for a broader recovery in the deepwater markets, it’s not even the first inning yet. It’s more like the stretching routine before pre-game warm ups. There’s going to be a game, but …

A restructuring press release from Seadrill on Tuesday sent shares tumbling 29%. The press release said achieving viable restructuring would involve “significant dilution to current shareholders” and noted that the company needs a $1bn lifeline. In this context, down shares 29% is about right. But significant dilution to shareholders in a restructuring …

It’s fair to say that the blow out preventer (BOP) business model is being re-shaped as we write. 10 months ago, GE and Diamond introduced a new BOP arrangement to the marketplace – one that transfers up-time responsibility to the OEM. This week, the largest BOP supplier moved to implement …

Even when offshore drillers aren’t tapping the capital markets for debt or equity, financial restructuring is quietly continuing behind the scenes. Contractual terms continue to be renegotiated with customers, and price concessions are still being given. Literally hundreds of multi-year contracts that were in effect this time two years ago have …