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Transocean to pull seven rigs for inspection after equipment failure in deepwater GOM
Petroleum News Houston staff
Big offshore drilling contractor Transocean said it will take seven of its deepwater rigs out of service to inspect the same riser system that apparently failed on its Discoverer Enterprise drillship in the Gulf of Mexico last month.
“Once the investigation and inspections are complete, the company will determine what modifications, if any, will be required,” Transocean said June 16.
Transocean was drilling a ninth development well at the BP-operated Thunder Horse field Mississippi Canyon Block 822 when in the early morning of May 21 the drilling riser separated between the Discoverer Enterprise and the wellhead.
The Houston-based company said it would be another two or three weeks before the riser is repaired and drilling can resume at Thunder Horse, the Gulf’s largest-ever discovery with an estimated 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
About two-thirds of the 6,000-foot riser string was recovered, the company said, adding that the metal likely would be heat-treated to for additional strength. On location at zero dayrate Meanwhile, the Discoverer Enterprise remains on location at Thunder Horse “at zero dayrate” to BP while the investigation continues into the specific cause of the incident. At a dayrate of $198,000, that means the cost to Transocean could run over $9 million based on the number of days the company expects the drillship to be out of service.
As a precaution, Transocean said it has scheduled downtime to inspect seven other rigs that use the same riser: Discoverer Spirit, Discoverer Deep Seas, Deepwater Discovery, Deepwater Frontier, Deepwater Millennium, Deepwater Pathfinder and the Deepwater Expedition. Four are in the Gulf of Mexico, two in Brazil and one in West Africa.
The company said downtime for the seven drilling rigs likely would not be lengthy.
For the second quarter ending June 30, Transocean said it expects revenues “at or slightly below” first-quarter revenues of $616 million because of rig downtime and a $10-million loss due to a labor strike in Nigeria.
As far as net income, however, the consensus among analysts is that Transocean will make $0.07 per share in the second quarter compared to $0.15 per share or $47.2 million in the prior quarter.
Transocean is the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor with more than 170 full and partially owned and managed mobile offshore drilling units, inland drilling barges and other assets utilized in support of offshore drilling activities worldwide.
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