Grupo R gets Hokchi drilling contract off Mexico

Mexico’s energy services provider Grupo R has signed an offshore drilling and logistics contract with compatriot Hokchi Energy, a subsidiary of Argentinean firm Pan American Energy.

Grupo R said on Thursday that it would be using the Cantarell III jack-up rig to drill wells during the Hokchi field development campaign off the coast of the State of Tabasco, Mexico.

The Cantarell III self-elevating platform was built at the Keppel Fels shipyard in Singapore. It is of KFels B-Class design with capacity to drill in water depth of up to 400 feet and up to 30,000 feet of drilling depth. It has the capacity to accommodate up to 150 personal.

Additionally, Cantarell III is equipped with the Keppel system called RigCare Solutions which, with thousands of sensors installed, provides real-time monitoring of the main equipment that allows to improve maintenance programs and improve the efficiency of operations.

The rig arrived off the Campeche coast on January 27, 2020. Following the arrival, Grupo R said the rig would start drilling operations on March 15.

The Cantarell III was delivered to Grupo R last December. As part of the deal, Grupo R also entered into a sale and leaseback arrangement for the rig with a wholly-owned subsidiary of Keppel O&M.

It was agreed that Keppel O&M would purchase the rig from Grupo R for about $190m and the rig would be leased back to Grupo R on a bareboat charter at competitive dayrates over ten years.

Under the bareboat charter, Grupo R has the right to purchase the rig at pre-agreed prices during the term of the bareboat charter. After the fifth year, Keppel O&M may, at its discretion, put the rig to Grupo R at a pre-agreed price.

As for the field, Hokchi is a shallow-water field that forms a single development block also known as Area 2 in the Southwest Marine region off the coast of Tabasco.

Hokchi lies within the Comalcalco sub-basin, located in the northwestern part of the Salinas basin. The productive reservoirs occur in three play types: Middle to Late Miocene turbidite sands, Late Miocene-Pliocene deltaic sands, and Plio-Pleistocene fluvial sands.