Noble Corporation is going to cold stack drillship Noble Bully I as it has no work lined up for the vessel. According to Noble’s latest fleet status report, the drillship just finished its contract with Shell in March and it is now enroute to Curacao for cold stacking.
Additionally, an undisclosed client has exercised its final two 30-day options for Noble’s jackup rig Noble
Regina Allen for accommodation services in UK, extending the contract through to mid July.
back after another hiatus just in time to comment on this news which doesn’t surprise me now that the five year commitment by Shell is completed. since I was not able to ever see the ship start operations actually drilling I never acquired knowledge of how well her small size, cluttered decks, non conventional derrick and other compromise features worked out in real life operations but considering that Shell owns half the ship makes me think that the BULLY I proved to not be much of a success. There were so many features in her design and construction which were on only surface examination questionable that I did not believe the ship would prove to be a viable drillship and now we shall see with the end of the BULLY II’s contract if Shell also pulls the plug on her too when the day comes. If it does, then expect the pair to be sold very cheap even if Shell ends up writing down every penny they invested in these two. Then there is the similar GLOBETROTTER pair?
of course there are the 50 or so other DP drillships and rigs which are also stacked all over the planet and the big question on which will ever drill again? why were so many ever built in the first place?
Someone will make a pile of money pulling all these assets out of cold stack. I participated in reactivating boats in the late 90’s / early 2000’s that had been stacked in the mid 80’s by Tidewater, some bottom of the barrel stuff headed to Africa, and it was a fascinating experience. The difference is going to be all the electronics geegaws that didn’t get properly secured. Whole vessels are going to have to be completely dehumidified before you can dare to re-energize them.
Alternately smarter people than us will try to take the quick route, resulting in the release of ton’s of magic blue smoke on every vessel.
So more displaced oil field workers. Sorry to hear that for sure. Imagine they aren’t placing these guys in what’s left of their fleet, hopefully they can find work before too long
There’s isn’t enough room for these guys anywhere in the fleet. Maybe a handful will take spots filled by current employees but there is only so many spots. Consider as well all the guys they laid off after the Bob Douglas went to foreign lands too.
