Noble Corporation finds work for two rigs, stacks three

Offshore drilling contractor Noble Corporation has found work in Europe and Asia Pacific regions for two of its jack-up drilling rigs. 

In its fleet status report issued on Tuesday, Noble said that the Noble Hans Deul jack-up rig was hired by Spirit Energy, the E&P joint venture which combines Centrica’s E&P business with Bayerngas Norge, for work offshore the UK.

Noble did not disclose the financial details of the deal but did say that the charter would begin in early April 2018 and end in late October 2018.

Spirit Energy also has one 65-day priced option and two 100-day priced options.

The Noble Hans Deul’s previous deal was with Shell, also in the UK, with the dayrate of $88,000. The rig started working for Shell in early August 2016 and was scheduled to complete the contract in mid-January 2018.

Further according to the fleet status report, Noble has found work for the warm-stacked Noble Tom Prosser jack-up rig which has been warm stacked since late October 2017.

The 2014-built rig has now been hired by ConocoPhillips to work from early April until early December off the shores of Timor-Leste.

Noble also updated several deals for certain rigs. Namely, the end date of the deal for the Noble Bob Douglas drillship was moved from late February to mid-January and the dayrate for the Noble Regina Allen jack-up was adjusted from $88,500 to $94,000 due to cost escalation in the contract. Both rigs are under contract with ExxonMobil.

The deal for the Noble Globetrotter II drillship with Total was slightly extended by moving the end date forward from late December 2017 to early January 2018. The drillship is currently working offshore Bulgaria.

Noble added in its report that it expects +/-110 days of operational downtime at zero dayrate for regulatory inspection in 2Q 2018 for the Noble Gene House jack-up currently operating in Saudi Arabia for Saudi Aramco. The rig is scheduled to complete its contract in mid-November 2018.

Three rigs stacked

It is also worth noting that, following the completion of their charters with undisclosed operators in the UAE in late December 2017, the Noble David Tinsley and Noble Alan Hay jack-ups began preparations for cold stacking.

The third rig, the 2014-built Noble Sam Hartley, has been warm-stacked in Malaysia since early January.

Offshore Energy Today Staff