Stena Drilling’s drillship commitment is progressing well. The company has signed contracts for three new vessels, first of which is due to be delivered in December.
The first of Stena’s Drill-MAX drillships should be delivered by year-end.
The vessels are based on the Drill-MAX design for operations in harsh environments and ultra deepwater, up to 3,000 m (9,842 ft). Construction has been contracted to Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea. The price tag for each dual-mast vessel is around $600 million.
Last month, commissioning of the first vessel, theStena Drill-MAX, was under way at Samsung’s Geoje yard. The contracted delivery date is Dec. 31, but the ship is expected to leave the yard a couple of weeks early.
The vessel has a four-year contract, plus options, with Repsol-YPF, which is expected to use it in deepwater areas such as the US Gulf of Mexico and off Brazil, and possibly in the demanding waters of the South Atlantic.
Vessel number two, in an advanced stage of construction in the drydock in September, is due to be launched on Oct. 31. Delivery is scheduled for end-June 2008. This vessel has been namedStena Carron, following the company’s usual policy of naming its drilling units after Scottish rivers.
Stena Carron has been awarded a three-year contract, with options, by Chevron, which plans to use it to support its exploration, appraisal, and development drilling programs on the UK continental shelf, including west of the Shetlands, the North Sea, off the Faroe Islands, and possibly elsewhere.
Steel cutting for vessel number three, for the time being known only asHull 1747, is due to start in early 2008; delivery is scheduled for mid-2009. Last month Hess Corp. announced it was taking this drillship on a five year-contract worth around $950 million.
Samsung had previous experience with drillships, but none as complex as the Drill-MAX, says Stena’s project manager Alex Cawthorne. The design features, for example, is a very complicated hydraulic drilling system, with an extensive network of pipework and a huge hydraulic power unit weighing 186 metric tons (205 tons).
At Chevron’s request Stena Drilling, a wholly owned subsidiary of Stena AB, introduced a number of design modifications forStena Carron which have been maintained for the third vessel. These include increasing the liquid mud storage capacity from 1,000 cu m (35,315 cu ft) to 2,300 cu m (81,224 cu ft), and the compensation capacity on the tool string from 800,000 lb to 1 million lb.
For more information contact Alex Cawthorne, Stena Drilling. Tel +44 1224 401 180, fax +44 1224 897 089,[email protected], www.stena-drilling.com
