Wintershall Awards Rig Contract for Maria Field to Odfjell Drilling
Wintershall awarded a $175 million rig contract for the Maria Field to Odfjell Drilling. The contract for the Deepsea Stavanger semi-submersible rig has been assigned in alignment with the other Maria license partners, Petoro and Centrica.
“In a difficult market environment, Wintershall is pushing ahead with our first operated development in Norway. Maria is a major subsea development on the Norwegian Continental Shelf and this is only the second major rig contract signed in 2015. With the procurement of the Deepsea Stavanger we demonstrating that we are still prepared to invest in this core region even in a difficult oil price environment,” Hugo Dijkgraaf, Wintershall Maria Project Director, commented in a note released on Monday.
Under the terms of the contract, the Deepsea Stavanger unit will drill six wells on the Maria Field starting from April 2017. In addition, the contract has options for additional wells.
Odfjell is expected to drill and complete three production wells in each of Maria’s two subsea templates located at a depth of around 300 metres on the Halten Terrace in the Norwegian Sea.
The whole region is suffering low oil prices. Last week, Aker Solutions notified its employees that it will reduce the workforce capacity in its Norwegian subsea business, explaining that the decision has to do with a continued market slowdown.
On Monday, the UK's Oil & Gas Authority wrote in its Six Months On update that it ‘is working with companies to encourage the retention of training and development programmes,’ underlining the importance of companies’ investments in training and developing people. It also stressed that it is vital to protect critical infrastructure to avoid a ‘domino effect’ that ‘could lead to the premature decommissioning of critical infrastructure, with the potential to shut down whole areas of the UKCS, stranding valuable resources.’
This is particularly important as the British population continues being adverse to shale gas. A recent report published by Community Energy Coalition did indeed find that shale gas is the least preferred method of energy generation, with just 2% of public support.
Also on Monday, Statoil wrote on Twitter that it ‘continues Mariner jacket installation on the UKCS.’