I was under the same impression as Crows, but I've just checked on rigzone, and there are no jackups capable of drilling at 600ft or greater (roughly 200m).
So that leads me to 2 conclusions:
- If they are still using a jackup, then I would think they would be looking at depths of 120m or shallower and they have an abundance of rigs all over the med and west africa - They will be using a semi sub and drilling a deeper target, therefore costs go up and maybe they will be looking at increasing the budget which will put some financial pressure on TPT particularly if the JKA takeover goes ahead. I was always thinking $50m (probably top end) roughly for the TAO-1 well, but was expecting a jackup, but using a semi sub will increase costs, which could push expected gross drill costs in excess of $50m, and maybe one of the reasons for a delay on rigs. The reason for the high price would still be due to mobilisation costs, but maybe they will look to try and share a rig with either Genel (John Paul Romano), but this is a deeper water semi sub and also any well will be probably earliest Q4, which puts timelines out or with Cairn (Cajun Express), but again they would face the same issues with the Genel rig.
I'm not sure there are any other prospects that would be shallow, which will either mean a more expensive rig (which may be required anyway) or high mobilisation costs, hence any hopes of keeping costs to below $40m IMO are long gone.
My guess is in order to fully evaluate the well data, they would need somewhere between 3-6 months so the well at the very latest must be completed by end of October / November, so a rig contract is required asap, or they then run the risk of having to move to the next stage with incomplete well data.
TPT Price at posting:
23.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
