Noble Corp nabs work for one drillship and four jack-up rigs

Offshore drilling company Noble Corporation in November painted optimistic outlook about the offshore rig demand, and a month later it said it had secured work for five rigs.

The driller on Thursday released its fleet reports showing it has secured contracts and extensions for Noble Sam Croft, Noble Tom Prosser, Noble Hans Deul, Noble Joe Beall, and Noble Gene House rigs.

The Noble Sam Croft drillship, which per the fleet report has been warm-stacked since 2016, has now won not one but two contracts. First, the rig is scheduled to start drilling for W&T Offshore in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, in the 1Q2019 to 2Q 2019 period.

After that, the Noble Sam Croft will move to South America where it will drill one well for an undisclosed operator. Bassoe Analytics shows the rig is expected to remain 61 days on the contract in South America.

Noble did not disclose dayrates for the two contracts.

Hattrick in Australia

Next, the Noble Tom Prosser, which had by the end of November worked for ConocoPhillips in Timor-Leste, will stick around in the region, as Noble has managed to secure three contracts for the rig in Australia.

First, the 2014-built jack-up will, starting in March or April 2019, begin work for Australian operator Santos. The rig will stay with Santos until October 2019.

Following on from the Santos gig, the rig will, the report shows, go on a month-long work on the CarbonNet project in Australia, starting November, ending in December.

The CarbonNet project is investigating the potential for establishing a commercial scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) network in Gippsland.

The network would bring together multiple carbon dioxide (CO2) capture projects in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley, transporting CO2 via a shared pipeline and injecting it into the deep underground, offshore storage sites in the Gippsland region of Victoria.

According to the project document, it is envisaged that the project will capture and store between 1 and 5 million tonnes of CO2 per year and have the potential to expand to 20 million tonnes per year or more.

Back to the rig, once done with the CarbonNet work, the Noble Tom Prosser will be passed on to its third client, ExxonMobil’s Australian subsidiary, Esso Australia.

According to Bassoe Analytics, the rig will begin its 4-month stint with Exxon on January 1, 2020. Exxon will have six one-well options to extend the rig’s stay in Australia.

Noble did not disclose dayrate details for any of the three contracts.

Extensions in the North Sea and the Middle East

Apart from these new contracts, for the Noble Sam Croft and Noble Tom Prosser Noble Corporation has secured extensions for three other rigs.

The 2009-built Noble Hans Deul jack-up unit has won a contract extension with Spirit Energy. The rig will stay busy with Spirit until late July 2019. The rig is currently located in the UK North Sea. Spirit will have 2×1 well options to extend the contract further.

In Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco has extended the contracts for the Noble Joe Beall and the Noble Gene House jack-up rigs. Both extensions began mid-November, however, the Gene House has a contract till the end of December 2018, while the Joe Beall will remain with Saudi Aramco till late April 2019. Each rig is on a $65.000 dayrate.