Seadrill has announced it has secured a two-year contract with Petrobras for the West Tellus in Brazil. Total contract value is expected to be approximately $170 million, inclusive of managed pressure drilling and ancillary services, with commencement expected in Q4 2019...

Maersk Drilling has entered into a contract with Serica Energy UK to drill a subsea development well at the Columbus Development in the Central part of the UK North Sea. The contract value is $8 million. The contract is expected to commence in Q4 2020, with an estimated duration of 70 days...

Dolphin Drilling has announced a two-month contract extension with i3 Energy for use of the Borgland Dolphin semisubmersible drilling rig and agreed to enter into a four-year strategic operations agreement between both companies...

Hess Corporation has announced an oil discovery at the Esox-1 exploration well located in Mississippi Canyon Block 726 in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Esox-1 was drilled in 1,405 m of water and encountered approximately 58 m of high-quality oil-bearing Miocene reservoirs...

Kosmos Energy has announced that the Orca-1 exploration well has made a major gas discovery offshore Mauritania in the BirAllah area. The results continue the 100% success rate from nine wells targeting the inboard gas trend in Mauritania/Senegal...

New research findings from Deloitte suggests that if Eagle Ford and Permian Basin shale operators were to fully optimize their well designs, they could generate capital efficiency gains of 19% and 23%, respectively...

Except for harsh-environment semis, global offshore fleet continues to see a very slow recovery, although 69% utilization is the highest it’s been since 2015 By Tony Crawford, Tarjei Myklebust and Aylar Ibrahimoglu, National Oilwell Varco Rig demand in this year’s National Oilwell Varco census has shifted in both areas of geographic activity and in rig type. Late 2017 and 2018 demonstrated promising improvements in global land utilization rates and modest recovery in offshore drilling. 2019 can be characterized by strong international rig utilization and demand for land, steadily improving demand for offshore and weakening demand for land rigs in North America. Offshore rig demand in North America is improving slightly, but it has yet to see the type of growth ...

Analyst: Drilling industry also must show more capital discipline as investors prioritize returns over growth By Linda Hsieh, Editor & Publisher Outlooks for the drilling industry have historically hinged on the rise and fall of oil prices. Today, while oil prices still matter, they now wield much less power in terms of their ability to put rigs back to work. “What investors really want is for incremental cash flow to not go to the drill bit,” said Chase Mulvehill, Senior Analyst Oilfield Services for Bank of America Merrill Lynch Research. “They want it to come back to investors. So you will not see a lot of rigs being added, even with a higher oil price.” The reason for that, Mr ...

US onshore activity likely to suffer as cautious operators rein in budgets, plan to drill and frac fewer wells next year By Linda Hsieh, Editor & Publisher Another tough year is in store for the US land drilling and completions market in 2020. John Spears, President of Spears and Associates, said he expects the Baker Hughes rig count to fall by 10% next year. “That’s a function of the fact that the operators are going to be extremely careful about their capital spending programs. They are going to be mostly focused on trying to improve profitability and returns to shareholders, and not so much in terms of growing production. We think that means activity will move lower in the US ...

As debt covenants come due, offshore drilling contractors may be forced to push harder for higher dayrates By Linda Hsieh, Editor & Publisher Offshore drillers can expect to see a better market in 2020, but it won’t be the kind of dramatic recovery that the industry is hoping to see. “It will be an improvement over 2019, just not dramatically,” said Cinnamon Edralin, Senior Offshore Rig Market Analyst for IHS Markit. Globally, IHS Markit expects demand to increase by about 18%, or about 90 rigs, over this year. That translates into approximately 561 units – 400 jackups, 86 semis and 75 drillships, according to Ms Edralin. More than half of that increase is expected to come from the jackup segment. ...