Qingdao Gute Ship Supplies Co., Ltd.

Offshore drilling contractor Transocean has again delayed the delivery of two eighth-generation ultra-deepwater drillships being built at Sembcorp Marine. By now, the delivery of the world's two most advanced drillships is more than four years behind schedule and at a cost of more than $850 million, nearly double the original cost. Even if all goes well, Sembcorp will have to wait another five years until 2027 to get paid in full.



Transocean said on June 7 that it had reached an agreement with Singapore-based Sembcorp's Jurong Shipyard to delay the delivery of two ultra-deepwater drillships, Deepwater Atlas and Deepwater Titan. Under the new agreement, delivery of the two drillships will be delayed to December 2021 and May 2022, respectively. As part of the new agreement, Jurong Shipyard has agreed to defer payments.



Transocean originally ordered the ships from Jurong Shipyard in 2014 at a cost of about $540 million each, with initial deliveries scheduled for the second quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018. However, due to the slump in the offshore market, Transocean has repeatedly delayed the delivery of its drillships since 2015.



It is worth mentioning that although the original price of the two drillships was US $540 million in 2014, the final cost of the two drillships had already reached US $1.93 billion, and the construction price of the two ships had exceeded the budget by US $850 million, according to the annual report disclosed by Sembcorp Marine in 2018. The Deepwater Titan cost about $1.05 billion in total, while the Deepwater Atlas cost about $885 million.



According to Transocean, the Deepwater Atlas and Deepwater Titan are the world's first eighth-generation ultra-deepwater drillships and the only RIGS to be equipped with a 3-million-pound hook load. It will be the most capable and specification drillship in the world, equipped with the first 20,000 psi subsea wellhead system, whose design and equipment have been specifically optimized to reduce fuel consumption and emissions, thereby minimizing the carbon footprint of each offshore project.