Bergen, Norway, headquartered Odfjell Drilling has been awarded a significant pre-contract award with BP for the provision of a newbuild, semi-submersible offshore drilling unit for use in the U.K.'s West of Shetland region.
The contract value is approximately $1.2 billion, excluding options, and is the largest contract in Odfjell Drilling's 40 year history.
The new unit will be involved in drilling in the Schiehallion and Loyal fields and will form a key part of the Quad 204 development. The full contract, which is subject to approval by the Quad 204 Partnership, will have a fixed duration of seven years and is due to start in fourth quarter 2014.
The Quad 204 project is a joint venture to re-develop the Schiehallion and Loyal fields, West of Shetland, in the U.K. BP is operator and owns 36.3 percent, with other interests as follows: Shell (36.3 percent); Hess Ltd (12.90 percent); Statoil (UK) Ltd (4.84 percent); OMV (UK) Ltd. (4.84 percent) and Murphy Petroleum (4.84 percent).¨
The new state of the art sixth generation rig will be built in South Korea by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME).
The new rig for BP is of the enhanced GVA7500 harsh environment design and will be a sister rig of the Deepsea Atlantic and Deepsea Stavanger previously delivered to Odfjell by DSME.
Daewoo announced last month that it inked a semi-submersible rig with an un-identified European client.
It revealed the newbuilding has a price tag of KRW 727.3bn ($621.9m) and will be delivered by May 15th 2014.