Ensco has bagged three drillship contracts offshore West Africa from Chevron, Shell and Total for an aggregate contract term of three years.

The deals put together have more than six years of additional options, stated the UK-based offshore drilling contractor.

With Chevron, Ensco is likely to work on a two-year contract in offshore Nigeria from August. The contract which is for the Ensco DS-4 drillship has a priced customer option for an additional year of work. Ensco DS-4 was previously preservation stacked in Tenerife before it got reactivated recently.  

Also in offshore Nigeria, Ensco has won a contract from Shell with work slated to begin in the first quarter of next year. For this, the drilling contractor will deploy its newbuild Ensco DS-10 drillship to honour a contract for one year which can be expanded by five more years optionally.

The Ensco DS-10 is claimed to be one of the most technologically advanced rigs in the global fleet.

Ensco’s third contract in West Africa is with Total for its drillship Ensco DS-7 until November 2017. The drillship will be moved to Ivory Coast to drill one well beginning in August 2017. The drilling of the well is expected to take 60 days to complete.  

Ensco CEO and President Carl Trowell said: “We continue to see offshore drillers with track records of safe and efficient operations as well as financial strength win a disproportionate amount of new work and these contracts are examples of our recent success in capitalizing on this trend.

“Additionally, we believe that this new work positions us well for follow-on opportunities, benefiting future utilization for our rig fleet.”

In May end, Ensco had agreed to acquire rival offshore drilling company Atwood Oceanics in an all-stock transaction to consolidate its fleet to 63 rigs.


Image : An Ensco drillship in operation. Photo: courtesy of CellsDeDells/Wikipedia.org.