As Noble drillship winds down its drilling gig, new bundle of opportunities springs up offshore Africa

Offshore drilling contractor Noble Corporation has unveiled a set of new assignments for one of its drillships off the coast of Africa, which is in the process of wrapping up its work in Ghana earlier than expected. Once this job is complete, the rig will move to Equatorial Guinea for the next drilling task on its list before going to Namibia for another one.

While disclosing that its 2014-built Noble Venturer seventh-generation Samsung 96K drillship is expected to complete its drilling campaign in Ghana with Tullow Oil in late May 2024 rather than in March 2025, as previously estimated, Noble revealed a batch of new assignments offshore Africa for the rig.

Once the drilling work in Ghana is done, the drillship will be relocated to Equatorial Guinea to spud two development wells and one exploration well for Trident Energy. This job, scheduled to begin in June 2024, will take about 150 days to complete. According to the offshore drilling giant, the new contract day rate has been revised slightly upwards to replace the legacy Tullow day rate.

After the Noble Venturer rig finishes its work in Equatorial Guinea, it is slated to embark on a journey to Namibia, where it will be in charge of drilling activities for Rhino Resources at an exploratory campaign consisting of a minimum of two wells. This drilling program is anticipated to start in November 2024.

Thanks to this, a day rate of $410,000, excluding mobilization, will apply for the firm term and option scope, for a total potential duration of 100 to 250 days. Noble explains that this work was previously conditionally awarded to the Noble Developer semi-submersible rig before the early completion of the Noble Venturer’s Tullow campaign.

Blake Denton, Noble’s SVP of Marketing and Contracts, commented: “We’re very proud of our Noble Venturer crew whose drilling efficiency helped achieve early completion of our campaign with Tullow and service partners, enabling new opportunities to partner with Trident Energy and Rhino Resources. We’re also excited to re-enter the Namibian arena after the original Venus discovery for TotalEnergies by the Noble Voyager a couple of years ago.”

Constructed at Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) in Korea, the Noble Venturer drillship can operate in water depths of 12,000 ft and its maximum drilling depth is 40,000 ft. This rig can accommodate 230 people.

This announcement comes after Noble won more work off the coast of Suriname for another one of its seventh-generation drillships with Petronas. The offshore drilling giant is stepping up its decarbonization game by slashing the carbon footprint of its drilling operations with many different tools, including the fleetwide rollout of a digital emission-monitoring solution that has been fitted on 29 rigs.