Offshore drilling company Shelf Drilling has been awarded a three-year contract for one of its drilling rigs by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).
Shelf Drilling said that the contract was won by the 1978-built Ron Tappmeyer jack-up rig for offshore operations in Indian waters.
It is worth noting that the rig is currently under contract with ONGC with a scheduled completion date in the second quarter of 2022. The current, three-year deal was awarded to the rig in January 2019 for operations in the Mumbai High area, also offshore India.
After the current contract expires, the start-up of operations under the new contract is supposed to begin in the fourth quarter of 2022. The company did not disclose any other details.
To remind, Shell Drilling several months ago won a three-year deal for the Parameswara jack-up rig also with the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).
The planned start-up of operations will be in the first quarter of 2022. The rig will operate in Mumbai High, off India. The Parameswara jack-up wrapped up the deal with Adani just recently and will not be traveling far as its previous deal was also for work in India.
Apart from the Ron Tappmeyer and the Parameswara, ONGC also booked one more rig from Shelf Drilling in 2021. The rig in question was the J.T. Angel jack-up which was hired in April 2021 under a three-year contract.
In its third-quarter results, Shelf Drilling stated that almost all its jack-up rigs were under contract with 27 of 30 currently hired.
The company claimed that the global number of contracted jack-up rigs was still under pre-pandemic levels with 383 rigs in January 2020 and 346 rigs in October 2021.
Regardless of this, Shelf Drilling believes there will be an improvement in the global jack-up demand and pricing in the near term.
To contact the author, email bojan.lepic@rigzone.com
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