Offshore staff

HOUSTON -- Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) is to construct an ultra-deepwater drillship (Tungsten Explorer) for Vantage Drilling.

This is a fixed-price turnkey contract, with delivery scheduled for May 31, 2013. The cost, including project management, commissioning, spares, pre-delivery crew costs, and inventory, should be in the range $580-590 million. There is also a fixed-price option for the purchase of an additional drillship.

Tungsten Explorer will be built in Okpo, South Korea, and will be capable of operating in water depths up to 12,000 ft (3,657 m), with a TVD capacity of 40,000 ft (12,192 m). The hull will have a variable deck load of 20,000 tons (18,143 metric tons) and will be 781 ft (238 m) long and 137 ft (41.7 m) wide.

Equipment will include a DP-3 dynamic positioning system, a 1,250-ton (1,134-metric ton) hook load drilling package, a 9,000 hp drawworks, and offline pipe handling and a trip saver system. The vessel will accommodate 200 personnel.

Paul Bragg, Vantage chairman and CEO, said: "While this will be our second company-owned unit to be constructed at DSME, it will be our fifth drillship project undertaken there, inclusive of our three ongoing construction oversight projects.

“Our strong relationship with the DSME management has allowed us to achieve exceptional project terms -- a) one of the lowest cost construction contracts of this kind, (b) one of the earliest deliveries of the recent order cycle -- just 24 months away, and (c) one of the highest specification ultra-deepwater units yet to be built.”

05/11/2011