Posted on May 23, 2022
Offshore driller Transocean has named the world’s first 8th generation drillship – the Deepwater Atlas – at a shipyard in Singapore.
Transocean said via social media that the naming of its latest drillship, now named the Deepwater Atlas, was held on April 30 in Singapore.
The Deepwater Atlas is one of two Transocean’s newbuild drillships built by Sembcorp Marine’s Jurong Shipyard, the other one being the Deepwater Titan.
Both the Deepwater Atlas and Deepwater Titan are the world’s first 8th generation ultra-deepwater drillships and the only rigs to feature a 3,000,000-pound hook-load. The drillships will also include the first ever 20,000 psi well control system.
The Deepwater Titan will also have one 15,000 psi blowout preventer while the Deepwater Titan will be equipped with two 20,000 psi blowout preventers.
The rigs are also built with a cleaner footprint in mind as they optimize fuel consumption and reduce emissions during offshore project executions.
In a social media video, Transocean CEO Jeremy Thigpen stated that the Deepwater Atlas was equipped with so much equipment that most of it was never seen before, giving the drillship the capability to access reservoirs never accessed before. Keelan Adamson, Transocean President and COO, added that the latest capabilities of this rig will reduce the time needed to drill a deepwater well, driving well costs down.
To remind, the two drillships were ordered by Transocean back in 2014 for $540 million each, but the deliveries were postponed several times for different reasons. After several deferrals, it was agreed that one of the rigs would be delivered in December 2021 while the other would be delivered in May 2022.
Neither deadline materialized and it is now clear that the Deepwater Atlas would be delivered in the second quarter of 2022 with a contract already lined up. Namely, it was hired by Beacon for drilling operations on the Shenandoah project in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico to start during the fourth quarter of 2022 – according to Transocean’s latest fleet status report.
Transocean was in August 2021 awarded a $252 million firm contract by Beacon for the Deepwater Atlas drillship which will be able to drill in water depths of up to 12,000 feet, and with a maximum drilling depth of 40,000 feet.
As for Shenandoah, it is located 160 miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Walker Ridge area of the Gulf of Mexico.
As for the other drillship, the Deepwater Titan, it has a deal with Chevron on its Anchor project in the Gulf of Mexico which will begin following delivery. If everything goes according to plan, the rig’s commercial operations will start in the first quarter of 2023 and end in the first quarter of 2028.
