Hot streak for Valaris continues with new Saudi Aramco deal

The trend of winning new deals and extensions continues for offshore drilling contractor Valaris following another extension for one of its jack-up rigs.

Valaris said on Wednesday that it was awarded a 183-day extension to its contract with Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco for the Valaris JU-140 standard modern jack-up.

According to the company, the extension is in direct continuation of the existing contract and, as a result, the Valaris JU-140 is now expected to be under contract through the end of 2021.

Data from VesselsValue shows that the rig has been under contract with Saudi Aramco for three years, or more precisely, since July 2018. It also stated that the dayrate for the rig during that time was $67,500 per day.

The offshore driller has been on quite a roll in recent months with many new deals coming in since the beginning of the year. The company during that time was also able to emerge from Chapter 11 and shed $7.1 billion in debt.

By the end of the first quarter, Valaris was able to rake in sixteen new contracts for its rigs – according to its fleet status report.

Since then, the company scored eight more deals for its rigs with this latest one with Saudi Aramco being the ninth. One of the most recent extensions was also for a rig bound to Saudi Aramco.

Before that, Valaris won two three-year deals with the North Oil Company and Chevron, TotalEnergies, Equinor, W&T Offshore, and Mubadala.

The most recent deal, awarded by BP, was announced on Monday. The Valaris DS-12 drillship was hired by the oil major for operations offshore Mauritania and Senegal.

The contract is expected to start in the first quarter of 2022 with an estimated duration of 285 days. The rig owner has not revealed any details about the day rate, but Bassoe estimates it to be around $200,000.