Maersk Takes Rig for UK Decom Work
Thursday 8 September 2016
Maersk Oil has taken a jack-up unit from related rig owner Maersk Drilling for plug-and-abandonment work in the UK sector of the North Sea.
The Danish player will take the Maersk Gallant for work on the Leadon and James subsea fields, beginning in February, Maersk Drilling said on Thursday.
The contract is for around 230 days and the deal value is some $24 million, equating to a dayrate of some $104,000 – assuming the contract value does not include mobilisation.
The rig, which can drill high-pressure, high-temperature wells, is nearing the end of its current charter with Total. The French supermajor picked it up earlier this year from Statoil after the Norwegian state-controlled player chopped its contract some six months early. It had been on sublet from Statoil to US independent ConocoPhillips from October until mid-February, when Total took it.
UK contractor Harkand had begun decommissioning work at Maersk’s Leadon field in the middle of last year. Harkand, however, went bust before the summer, but a group of the company’s executives then bought it out in June.