With Brent trading at almost $80/bbl and Permian constraint friction heating up (pipe, diffs, trucks, etc), it feels like it’s time to start getting more constructive on the offshore recovery theme. But can long-cycle deepwater returns ever compete with short-cycle Permian returns again? An expert weighs in for our first …
Read More »The Turning Tide Offshore Is Lifting Harsh Environment Rigs First [Friday Guest Post]
The offshore drilling market is starting a comeback after the worst downturn in a generation (if not the worst ever). While dayrates are still barely keeping the contractors afloat, tender activity and utilization appear to be headed out of a trough. Bright spots in a few areas appear to be …
Read More »We Fished These 25 Key Points From The Earnings Ocean
During earnings season, an ocean of content comes at you fast. 7,000 words are spoken on the average earnings conference call. There were 27 oilfield earnings conference calls this week. We did the math. That’s the word count equivalent of 200 Infill Thinking posts. How much of this info overload …
Read More »Is It Just Us Or Is The Tide Starting To Turn For Offshore Drilling? [Discussion Topic]
There is a new discussion topic over in our Thinking Aloud forum this morning It revolves around the apparent return of some optimism in the offshore drilling sector, particularly deepwater. Is this compressed business finally on the verge of a turn or is it still too early to be cautiously …
Read More »Diamond Offshore Summarizes The Deepwater Drilling Outlook In Two Paragraphs
Infill Thinking reader Ron Davis wrote in with a great excerpt on the offshore drilling outlook. As we start to think more about a potential inflection point in deepwater, we felt the thoughts he shared were worth printing in full… There’s a lot more to this story… Login to see …
Read More »When It Comes To Managing Drillship Effective Supply, Contractors Are Playing A Game Of Convict Poker [Guest Post]
Each Friday in June, we are passing the keyboard to one of our readers to share perspective from the field. This week, Ron Davis weighs on on a classic business conundrum in deepwater. The drilling contractors have, in an effort to downplay the daunting oversupply (and possibly drive down distressed …
Read More »Let’s Make Offshore Drilling Investable Again. Exploring The Link Between Scale & Value As Consolidation Begins
Tuesday was a day of dichotomy for the notion of operational scale in offshore drilling. Even as one drilling contractor paid penance for scale bought long ago, two others ignited the next round of consolidation, extolling the virtues of operational scale in this disaggregated sector. Taken together, these two news items …
Read More »Could “Stealth Scrapping” Balance The Deepwater Rig Market Sooner Than Public Retirements Suggest?
If deepwater rig demand were to begin its ascent today, it would be met with a glut of rigs that would render the impact on dayrates, and indeed contractor bottom lines, relatively impotent. If more rigs aren’t removed from the structural oversupply before demand moves higher, drilling contractors are at risk …
Read More »It’s Been A Huge Week For Deepwater Darling Liza, And It’s Still Early
On ExxonMobil’s conference call Friday, we will be listening for talking points on two key development areas in particular: the Permian Basin and the deepwater Liza development offshore Guyana. The Liza development is especially important as it is one of the first major deepwater projects that is moving forward since the …
Read More »As Statoil Ramps UK Exploration, Transocean Wins Contracts That Are More Interesting Than They Appear
Thanks in part to the renewed exploration push in the UK, Transocean just announced two new contracts for the Transocean Spitsbergen (a 2009-built UDW HDHE semi) for Statoil drilling programs. The dayrate is near break-even, but that’s the least interesting thing about these contract awards… Digging deeper, a $27mm difference in the contract …
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