Brand new drillship joins Saipem fleet

A new ultra-deepwater drillship named Santorini has been delivered to Italy’s Saipem by South Korea’s Samsung Heavy Industries.

The Italian contractor entered into a two-year charter contract with the South Korean shipyard in June 2021. Within this deal, Saipem also got an option to buy the Santorini drillship, which can be used at its discretion depending on the trend of demand.

Under the agreement from June, the drillship was expected to be delivered in November 2021 and the delivery has now taken place as expected. As confirmed to Offshore Energy, Saipem has recently celebrated the delivery of the Santorini drillship by signing the relevant certificates at the Samsung Shipyard of Geoje, South Korea.

“Saipem wishes to congratulate its people on the commitment and the passion they once again demonstrated in completing her upgrades and start-up on schedule,” the Italian company said.

Saipem’s Marco Toninelli, COO Drilling Offshore, previously explained that the Santorini drillship would increase the company’s production capacity and allow it to meet the demand at a stage where its current offshore drilling fleet had almost full contractual coverage.

The Samsung Santorini is a seventh-generation drillship equipped with two 7 cavities anti-eruption devices (Blow Out Preventer – BOP), the highest standard for ultra-deepwater drillships. The high-performance craft is capable of operating at water depths up to 12,000 feet (over 3,500 meters).

When it comes to the drillship’s contractual engagement, Saipem said in late July 2021 that Santorini would take over the contract previously held by Saipem 10000, which was also built by Samsung, for operations in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. As a result, the vessel will start drilling operations in the Gulf for Eni in early 2022, scheduled to last until at least mid-2023.

According to the latest AIS data, the vessel is now underway from South Korea’s Okpo and is expected in Mauritius on 27 December 2021.

As for the drillship, it was initially ordered from Samsung Heavy by Ocean Rig and expected to be delivered in the second quarter of 2017. However, the delivery was in April 2018 postponed to September 2019. In the meantime, Ocean Rig was acquired by Transocean in a deal completed in December 2018.

Transocean did not keep the order in place and decided instead to cancel not only Santorini but the Ocean Rig Crete drillship as well. This was in September 2019 just as the drillship was about to be delivered under the previous agreement between Samsung and Ocean Rig.

The total estimated future costs associated with the delivery and placing the drillships into service for Transocean would have been approximately $1.1 billion.