Greek player DryShips has won the race to provide deep-water
drilling rigs to Brazilian oil giant Petrobras in two deals worth $1.1 billion.
The rig and ship owner has also set its sights on a listing
in the US within the next few months with New York the most likely candidate.
Petrobras on Thursday signed up to DryShips’ Ocean Rig
Mykonos and Ocean Rig Corcovado for three years each, the Nasdaq-listed outfit
revealed in a results announcement.
“The contract for the Ocean Rig Mykonos will commence
directly after delivery from Samsung Heavy Industries in September 2011, while
the contract for the Ocean Rig Corcovado will commence in direct continuation
of the current contract with Cairn Energy offshore Greenland,” DryShips wrote.
The awards follow a fierce battle for Petrobras’ business
with the Brazilian stalwart recently appearing to snuball offers as being
too expensive.
“The prices were not outrageous but Petrobras saw them as
compatible with deeper water units than the rigs it was after here,” one
observer told Upstream in April. “I think they will be back again soon,” he added.
Apart from DryShips, Transocean, Songa Offshore, Brazil’s
PetroServ, Mexico’s Industrial Perforadora de Campeche and Pacific Drilling of
the US were also in the running for the duo of tenders, said to have been for
three and five years.
“Ocean Rig has entered into the next phase of its
development and is in a unique position to capitalise on the positive ultra
deepwater market fundamentals,” DryShips, led my Greek shipping magnate George
Economou, wrote.
“By exercising two of our four options to build additional
seventh generation drillships, Ocean Rig is now the largest pure player in the
ultra deepwater sector.”
The company continued that it will seek a public listing in
the US “during the next few months”. The owner in December raised $500 million
from a private placement of shares in Ocean Rig in Oslo. Upstream’s sister
publication, TradeWinds, reported in January that the owner was likely to hold
on to its Oslo listing in addition to seeking a float in the US