Bussiness News

Seadrill today took delivery of the new deepwater semi-submersible drilling rig West Orion from the Jurong Shipyard in Singapore. The unit was delivered on budget and 10 days ahead of original delivery schedule. The drilling rig will leave Singapore tomorrow, en route to its first six-year drilling assignment for Petrobras offshore Brazil. Commencement of operations is expected at the end of July.

West Orion is a sixth generation, high specification, ultra-deepwater, state of the art semi-submersible drilling unit. The rig has a high load carrying capacity, an efficient drilling floor layout with improved safety and working environment measures. West Orion is designed with a dynamic positioning system and a water depth capacity up to 3,000 meters.

Alf C Thorkildsen, Chief Executive Officer in Seadrill Management AS, says, "We are pleased to report the third consecutive on-time, on-budget delivery of a semi-submersible drilling rig to Seadrill from the Jurong shipyard. This is the third deepwater newbuild delivered to Seadrill that starts a long-term contract with Petrobras. The completion of our 10^th newbuilding project within two years confirms Seadrill's ability to manage complex projects within time and cost and is a great achievement for our organization and the people involved. It also confirms that the Seadrill strategy to order newbuild units with highly reputable yards like Jurong shipyard is paying off."