Report: Petronas hires ultra-deepwater drillship at $170k per day

September 18, 2017

Cash-strapped Pacific Drilling has reportedly found work for its Pacific Santa Ana drillship which has been out of work since January.

The driller, recently suspended from trading in New York for not fulfilling the required trading conditions, has, according to VesselsValue found employment for its previously stacked drillship Pacific Santa Ana.

According to VesselsValue, the contract for the 2011-built drillship is with the Malaysian oil and gas giant Petronas. The contract is for six months, and is expected to start late in November 2017, ending late in May 2018.

The marine intel information website has informed that the dayrate for the contract has been set at $170,000. For comparison, in its previous long term contract with Chevron, which ended in January 2017, the rig had a dayrate of more than $480.000.

Offshore Energy Today has reached out to Pacific Drilling, seeking confirmation of the information shared by VesselsValue. We have yet to receive a response.

The debt-laden offshore driller Pacific Drilling has been evaluating its options, including Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after bondholders of a $439 million bond recently rejected the company’s request to extend the maturity date beyond December 1, 2017. The company has also recently lost its long-serving CEO who left “to pursue other opportunities”.

Pacific Drilling owns a fleet of seven ultra-deepwater drillships. It issued its last fleet status report in July, showing only one rig of the seven as having a substantial longer term contract with a solid dayrate – the Pacific Sharav which is operating for Chevron in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, on a $551.000 dayrate until August 2019.

The Pacific Scirocco was on a contract with Hyperdynamics on a one firm well contract at $225.000 per day, plus three optional wells. The contract extension is now questionable as Hyperdynamics has recently suffered a major setback drilling a duster at its Fatala-1 well offshore Guinea, using the Pacific Scirocco.

Offshore Energy Today Staff