Turkey’s TPAO Acquires Two Drillships from Eldorado Drilling

Turkey’s state oil company, TPAO, has recently made a significant purchase by acquiring two sister drillships from Norway’s Eldorado Drilling. The deal involves the 2014-built West Draco and her sister, the 2015-built West Dorado drillships, which are set to be utilized in Libya and southern Turkey.

These newly acquired vessels will join TPAO’s existing fleet of drillships, including the Fatih, Yavuz, Kanuni, and Abdulhamid Han. Currently, all four of TPAO’s drillships are engaged in the development drilling of the Sakarya field, which is estimated to hold a substantial 540 billion cubic meters of gas. The new drillships may likely be deployed for the appraisal of the recently discovered Göktepe field, which is believed to contain approximately 75 billion cubic meters of gas.

Eldorado Drilling was compelled to sell the drillships to TPAO at a loss, with each rig reportedly fetching a price of $245 million. The company had initially acquired three newbuild seventh-generation ultra-deepwater drillships from Samsung Heavy Industries, including the Zonda, West Dorado, and West Draco. However, only the Zonda managed to secure a contract in Brazil with Petrobras, commanding a dayrate of around $450,000.

With the other two drillships failing to secure work, they were placed in layup first in Korea and then in Malaysia. The decision to sell them to TPAO was likely the most viable option, as bringing the rigs into operation would have incurred significant costs of around $80 million. Moreover, the daily layup costs for each unit amounted to approximately $20,000.