Songa Offshore takes delivery of Cat D rig
Songa Offshore has taken delivery of the Songa Enabler Category D semisubmersible from Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering in South Korea.
The Songa Enabler will shortly depart South Korea en route to Norway for commencement of an eight-year drilling contract with Statoil, with the first assignment on the Snøhvit field. Commencement of drilling operations is expected to take place in Q3 2016.
The Songa Enabler is a sixth-generation, high-specification, harsh-environment, fully winterized midwater rig designed for year-round drilling, completion, testing and intervention operations in water depths up to 500 m. The rig is certified DP3 and is equipped with a state-of-the-art drill floor and an efficient layout with improved safety and working environment features.
Keppel FELS delivers two b class jackups to Mexico
Keppel FELS has delivered two jackups – CANTARELL I and CANTARELL II – to the Mexican company Grupo R.
The KFELS B Class design rigs will be chartered to PEMEX for operations on the Cantarell field offshore Mexico. They are the first two of five jackups that Keppel FELS is building for Grupo R.
With the two rigs delivered, there will be 10 KFELS B Class rigs working in Mexico, two of which are directly owned by PEMEX.
The jackups are designed to operate in water depths of up to 400 ft and drill to depths of 30,000 ft. They are equipped with fully automated high-capacity rack and pinion jacking systems and self-positioning fixation systems. Each has accommodations for 150 people.
Besides building new jackups for Mexico, Keppel has also repaired and serviced a total of 18 rigs that have been deployed in Mexico.
Petrobras extends contract for Seadrill’s West Tellus
Seadrill has been awarded an 18-month contract extension for the West Tellus drillship by Petrobras. The extension will commence in April 2018 and secures work for the unit through October 2019. The total backlog for the contract extension is approximately $164 million.
As part of the agreement to extend the contract for the West Tellus, Seadrill has agreed to a dayrate reduction on the current contract, effective 26 February, resulting in a $132 million reduction in backlog.
The net effect of this agreement is a $32 million increase in backlog.
KCA Deutag awarded drilling contract for 7 Statoil platforms on the norwegian continental shelf
KCA Deutag has retained a drilling contract for seven of Statoil’s platforms on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The contract is for the provision of drilling operations, maintenance services and engineering support for the Gullfaks and Oseberg fields.
This extension from the original contract period will commence on 1 October 2016 and will run to October 2018, with an additional option to extend by two further periods of two years each.
KCA Deutag also operates the Kvitebjørn platform for Statoil under a separate contract and, in 2013, the group was awarded the management, operation and maintenance of two Category J jackups, which will also begin operating on the Norwegian Continental Shelf next year.
BP, CNPC sign shale gas production-sharing contract
BP and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) have signed a production-sharing contract (PSC) for shale gas exploration, development and production in the Neijiang-Dazu block in the Sichuan Basin, China. The contract is BP’s first shale gas PSC in China and covers an area of approximately 1,500 sq km. CNPC will be operator for this project.
This PSC is the first achievement under BP and CNPC’s framework agreement on strategic cooperation that was signed last October during a visit to the UK by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
BP’s Energy Outlook (2016 edition) expects that, by 2035, shale gas will account for a quarter of the total gas produced globally and China will become the world’s largest contributor to growth in shale gas production.
Tullow encounters oil shows in northern kenya well
Tullow Oil has announced that the Cheptuket-1 well in Block 12A, Northern Kenya, has encountered good oil shows, seen in cuttings and rotary sidewall cores, across an interval of more than 700 m. Cheptuket-1 is the first well to test the Kerio Valley Basin and was drilled by the PR Marriott Rig-46 to a final depth of 3,083 m.
The strong oil shows encountered in Cheptuket-1 indicate the presence of an active petroleum system with significant oil generation. Post-well analysis is in progress ahead of defining the future exploration program in the basin. As previously advised, the PR Marriott Rig-46 will be demobilized. On the back of the encouraging Cheptuket-1 and successful Etom-2 results, further exploration activities are being evaluated.
