Schlumberger buys stake in Borr Drilling

Schlumberger, the world’s largest oilfield services provider has bought a stake in Norway’s Borr Drilling, a recently established offshore drilling company.

This was revealed by Schlumberger’s CEO Paal Kibsgaard at a conference in New Orleans on Monday.

He said the company had set up a special venture fund for project investments “to demonstrate our openness to new types of business relationships with our customers.”

“With our new venture fund we are simply expanding our offering from technical support to now also include financial support, where needed, with the ultimate goal of securing more activity for our 18 product lines.”

He then revealed that examples of some of the investments “so far” include the Fortuna Project with Ophir and OneLNG , the Tendrara project with Sound Energy, “and most recently our investment in Borr Drilling.”

Offshore Energy Today has reached out to both Schlumberger and Borr Drilling, seeking more details on the size of the investment.

Borr Drilling, a newcomer in the offshore drilling industry, raised eyebrows this month when it announced it would buy 15 jack-up drilling rigs from Swiss-based Transocean for $1.35 billion. This mean Transocean is exiting the jack-up rig business.

After the announcement, Borr Drilling launched a private placement through which it raised some $800 million with the support from new and existing investors. According to Finansavisen, Schlumberger bought some $220 million worth of shares in Borr Drilling.

Offshore Energy Today Staff