Transocean bags $745m worth of contracts for three drillships

New York-listed offshore driller Transocean has announced that it won new deals and extensions for three of its drillships.

The only rig to win two deals is the 2009-built Dhirubhai Deepwater KG1 drillship. The rig’s contract with Reliance Industries under a dayrate of $330,000 ends this month. The India-based company has decided to extend the contract for the rig by 60 days at a slightly increased dayrate of $348,000.

After the rig completes the extension in December 2023 it will start a 45-day preparation period for the brand-new contract awarded by India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. The $347,500 dayrate, 21-month contract will start in February 2024 and end in October 2025. Both the extension and the new deal will be for work offshore India.

The second contract is a three-year deal for the still-under-construction Deepwater Aquila drillship. It is supposed to start work for Petrobras in Brazil in June 2024 and end in June 2027. The agreed dayrate is $448,000.

The Deepwater Invictus was the last drillship to scoop a deal. The 20-day contract in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico was awarded by an undisclosed client at a rate of $440,000. The well has been completed.

Transocean stated that the aggregate incremental backlog associated with these contracts is approximately $745m. As of October 18, 2023, the company’s total backlog is approximately $9.4bn.

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