Equinor Mobilizes Hercules Semi-Submersible Platform to Drill a Well Offshore Canada
SFL Corporation has entered into a Canadian drilling contract with Equinor.
The company announced it on August 14, 2023.
Contract details:
- contract value – USD 100 million per well + option for 1 additional well;
- drilling rig – semi-submersible drilling rig Hercules;
- drilling start date – 2 sq. 2024;
- duration of the contract – approximately 200 days, including mobilization to Canada;
- operator is Odfjell Drilling on behalf of SFL.
Loading semi-submersible drilling rig Hercules:
- up to 4 sq. 2023 Drilling for ExxonMobil in Canada;
- then it will be mobilized to Namibia under a contract with Galp Energia.
This contract brings some optimism, along with other recent contracts, and shows that the market for modern heavy-duty semi-submersible drilling rigs is strengthening and will remain strong for a long period.
Equinor is working on a number of blocks in the Flemish Pass Basin on Canada’s east coast.
Flemish Pass Pool:
- located in the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean, almost 400 km east of St. John’s;
- adjacent to the Jeanne d’Arc basin, where mining is already underway, and to the prospective Orphan basin;
- Equinor is implementing the major Bay du Nord project in the Flemish Pass Basin, which has already discovered several oil fields;
- in April 2022, the project received federal environmental approval from the Canadian authorities;
- production technology – planned using a floating oil production, storage and offloading unit (FPSO) with a capacity of up to 200 thousand barrels per day;
- the start of production was scheduled for 2028, due to rising costs, Equinor announced in May 2023 that it was postponing the project for up to 3 years;
- The project will be the 5th offshore oil field in Newfoundland and Labrador to have come on stream since production began at the Hibernia field in 1997.
