Turkey awaits arrival of fourth drillship to prepare for next drilling mission

Turkey’s fourth drillship, bought last year from a South Korean shipyard, is set to join three other drillships in less than a week as the country is working to develop its extensive gas resources amid a growing need for the security of supply.

In November last year, Turkey’s oil and gas company TPAO bought the West Cobalt drillship, previously known as Cobalt Explorer from South Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering. The yard had been looking for a buyer for the ill-fated drillship for years and TPAO was its third and final customer.

The drillship was first ordered by Vantage Drilling back in 2013 but, before it was even finished, Vantage cancelled the order in August 2015, seeking to recover funds of about $60 million paid to the shipyard. Only days later, DSME also cancelled the deal for the construction of the drillship due to a contract breach. The drillship was said to be worth about $600 million at the time.

Years later, John Frederiksen’s Northern Drilling moved to buy two drillships from DSME, the West Aquila and the West Libra. These were previously ordered and cancelled by Seadrill. Within this deal, Northern also secured an option to buy a third drillship, the Cobalt Explorer, for about $350 million. This was in May 2018.

The option was exercised in April 2019 but in October 2019 Northern Drilling cancelled the resale contract for the Cobalt Explorer, at this point known as West Cobalt, with DSME, citing a repudiatory breach of contract by the shipyard as the reason behind the cancellation. The two companies then in November of the same year entered a dispute over the cancelled order as the shipyard challenged Northern’s notice. Orders for the other two drillships were also cancelled by Northern in 2021, leaving the company with no rigs in its fleet.

Following TPAO’s purchase of the drillship last November, the rig departed from Okpo, South Korea on 7 March 2022, Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister, Fatih Dönmez, said in March. It is currently expected to arrive at the Taşucu Port on Thursday, 19 May, according to the latest AIS data.

Quoting TPAO Chairman, Melih Han Bilgin, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported earlier this week that the country’s fourth drillship was planned for activities in the Eastern Mediterranean, adding that the vessel would be prepared for operations while at Taşucu port with expectations to be ready for the Mediterranean mission as early as July.

Turkey’s other three drillships – Fatih, Kanuni, and Yavuz – are all currently employed on different operations.

About a month ago, TPAO said that the Fatih drillship was conducting exploration drilling operations on the Gökçebey-1 well while the Kanuni vessel was working on the Türkali-5 well. As a reminder, the Kanuni rig completed all planned flow tests in the Sakarya gas field in early February 2022.

The Yavuz drillship started its first mission in the Black Sea last month with operations on the Türkali-2 well where it was supposed to place the wellhead valve on the seabed and complete the upper well.

The first of the giant wellhead valves to be used in the biggest gas discovery in the country’s history – Sakarya – arrived in Filyos, where the country’s natural gas processing facilities will be, in late March, according to Minister Dönmez.

The Sakarya gas field was discovered in August 2020, using the Fatih drillship. So far, TPAO has discovered a total of 540 bcm of gas in the Western Black Sea ultra-deep offshore.

Sakarya gas field development project comprises a subsea gas production system, a receiving and processing terminal on the Filyos shore, and pipelines to connect them. The pipeline beneath the Black Sea connecting the gas field to shore will be built this year.

Turkey’s goal is to bring the Black Sea gas to production in the first quarter of 2023.

TPAO has already assembled a team of contractors for the project, including a consortium of Subsea 7 and Schlumberger, Italy’s Saipem, and the UK’s Wood.

The country is moving forward with efforts to make the Eastern Mediterranean a new route for energy supply.