New three-year gig for Shelf Drilling’s rig in India

Offshore drilling contractor Shelf Drilling has received an award for a three-year contract with Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) for offshore operations in Indian waters.

The contract was awarded to the 1978-built Ron Tappmeyer jack-up rig, Shelf informed on Tuesday.

The rig is currently under contract with ONGC with a scheduled completion date in the second quarter of 2022. The current, three-year contract was awarded to the rig in January 2019 for operations in the Mumbai High area, offshore India.

Following the completion of the current deal, the planned start-up of operations under the new contract is 4Q 2022. No financial details were revealed.

Earlier this month, Shelf Drilling revealed that 27 of its 30 jack-up rigs were under contract. The rig owner stated that the global number of contracted jack-up rigs remained below the pre-pandemic level with 383 rigs in January 2020 and 346 rigs in October 2021. However, Shelf expects to see an improvement in the global jack-up demand and pricing in the near term.