Noble Corporation Announces New Rig Deals and Sales

Offshore drilling giant Noble Corporation has announced several new rig deals in its latest fleet status report, along with some rig sales.

The 2014-built 7th-generation drillship Noble Stanley Lafosse won an extension with its current customer, Murphy Oil, for five more wells. The rig started working for the customer in the Gulf of Mexico in February 2025, and this latest extension will keep it busy until August 2027. The contract has a five-well option to extend the deal further.

Another 2014-built rig, the Noble Intrepid jackup, won a contract to work for BP in the UK for the Northern Endurance Partnership CCS project. Work is expected to begin in April 2026 at a dayrate of $150,000 with an estimated duration of 168 days. The contract has two option wells.

The same project will also utilize the Noble Innovator, which was previously awarded a contract for the same dayrate. It will begin work in August 2026. The contract is set to last 387 days and has two option wells.

In a somewhat different role, the 2008-built Noble Resilient jackup will work from August 2025 until November 2025 under a 92-day accommodation services contract at the Inch Cape offshore wind farm off the UK. The contract is worth $6.5m, excluding mobilization and demobilization fees. Options could extend the rig’s stay for up to 58 days.

Early in the year, the company said that it put up for sale its cold-stacked drillships Pacific Scirocco and Pacific Meltem. The sale of the two rigs closed in June and July, respectively, for combined gross proceeds of $41m.

Noble also entered into a definitive agreement to sell the 2016-built cold-stacked jackup Noble Highlander for $65m to an undisclosed buyer. The sale is expected to close in the third quarter.

The offshore driller is also looking to offload two more rigs, the 2013-built drillship Noble Globetrotter II and the 2009-built jackup Noble Reacher. The two are currently held for sale, but no buyer has yet been announced.

The fleet status report also confirmed that the Noble Valiant drillship would be the second rig for TotalEnergies’ campaign in Suriname, scheduled to commence in the fourth quarter of 2026, while the Noble Venturer was confirmed as the second rig for Shell’s Gulf of Mexico campaign set to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027. Both contracts were won during the first quarter, but it was not known at the time which rig would service which contract.

Along with the deals for the Noble Viking, Noble Globetrotter I, and Noble Innovator reported by Splash earlier in the quarter, the driller won a total of $380m in new contracts during the second quarter of the year. Backlog as of August 5, 2025, stands at $6.9bn.