Valaris floater clinches 16-well contract with Woodside

Offshore drilling contractor Valaris has been awarded a 16-well contract with Woodside for operations offshore Australia.

The rig owner said on Monday that the contract was awarded to its semi-submersible rig, Valaris DPS-1.

The contract is expected to start in the late first quarter or early in the second quarter of 2022 with an estimated duration of 300 days. No further details regarding the rig’s day rate have been revealed. Bassoe Offshore estimates the day rate will be around $220,000.

This is not the rig’s first gig with Woodside. Namely, following a two-well contract from February 2019, the rig was in October 2019 awarded a seven-well contract extension with Woodside, with an estimated duration of 420 days from July 2020 to September 2021.

However, according to Valaris’ latest fleet status report, published in May 2021, the DPS-1 was at the time available and in Malaysia following early contract termination. Namely, instead of completing in September 2021 as initially agreed, the rig’s contract was terminated early and it ended in September 2020.

The Valaris DPS-1 is a semi-sub rig of an F&G ExD Millenium design built in 2012. The rig was previously known as Ensco DPS-1 and before that as Atwood Condor. The consolidation in the offshore drilling market, i.e. Ensco’s acquisition of Atwood Oceanics in 2017 and Ensco’s merger with Rowan in 2019, is the reason behind this rig’s name change. Following Ensco’s merger with Rowan, the new company changed its name to Valaris in July 2019.

Valaris has also recently been awarded another new contract in Australia, also for a semi-submersible rig. The Valaris MS-1 rig was awarded the contract by Western Gas for its Sasanof exploration well.

The MS-1 is a generation-6 deepwater MODU currently operating in waters off the Carnarvon Basin. Drilling will start at the earliest in mid-February 2022, subject to approvals, with an estimated total campaign duration of 25 days.