Shelf Drilling gets third termination in less than a month

Offshore drilling contractor Shelf Drilling has entered into a mutual agreement with a customer to shorten the contract for another one of its jack-up drilling rigs operating in the Middle East, which makes it a third early termination for Shelf in less than a month. 

The drilling contractor said on Monday that the contract for the Shelf Drilling Mentor will now end in October 2020 instead of January 2022.

This contract was originally executed in 2017 and started in early 2018 in the Middle East.

Namely, Shelf Drilling Tenacious and the Shelf Drilling Mentor in 2017 each won a two-year contract with Dubai Petroleum, including two one-year options.

In July 2019, Dubai Petroleum exercised a two-year extension for each of the Shelf Drilling Tenacious and the Shelf Drilling Mentor jack-up rigs, committing both rigs until January 2022.

In March 2020, Shelf entered into a mutual agreement with Dubai Petroleum to amend the contract end date for the Shelf Drilling Tenacious from January 2022 to September 2020.

Less than a week later, Shelf Drilling received another early termination of a drilling contract. This time it was for the Trident XIV jack-up rig operating for ExxonMobil offshore Nigeria.

Shelf said on Monday that the premium jack-up rig of LT Super 116 E design will be available for opportunities beginning early October 2020.