I just had a quick read through the March and June 2011 Maresk...

I just had a quick read through the March and June 2011 Maresk Drilling newsletters and from what I can gather with reading between the lines is the Maersk deliverer may be under-performing.

In the March newsletter, the Maersk Deliverer won an award for the 180 days to December 6 with 0 lost time incidents. However, the rig manager resigned on February 18 (I speculate this may have something to do with the Ghana drill terms).

In the June newsletter, Maersk drilling was forced to employ Ghanaians for 50% of its operating crew. And we must not forget the Maersk Deliverer is one of the most advanced rigs in the world. "Local content is as much an opportunity as it is a challenge to us. The opportunity lies in our socially responsible behaviour and the challenge lies in the higher risk of safety incidents and low performance. These challenges are however manageable as long as we are risk conscious".
So my take on this is that there was a performance issue, and that this issue was clearly evident in the extended Ghana drill time despite the discovery.

The question remains as to what are the labor requirements offshore Senegal/GB? Has the Ghanaian crew been replaced with fresh inexperienced workers from Senegal through mandatory requirements or has it been replaced with experienced international workers? Even still, any international workforce that is 50% new will require months of drilling to reach maximum efficiency.

The situation with the Maresk Inspirer is a testament to the amount of time it takes to improve rig performance (mentioned in the March newsletter). While this rig is not an ultra-deepwater semi-submersible, the crew took 2 years to improve their performance score of 2.7 (low) to 4.9 (presumably it is out of 5).

Furthermore the Maersk Deliever did not feature among the list of rigs to be awarded for 90 days without any HSE (Health, safety, environmental) incidents up until the end of April.

In light of this, I personally think it's a waste of time guessing how deep the drill bit is. Without any progress reports there is absolutely no way of telling whether the rig is performing to specifications. As old saying goes, a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. Expect delays!

By the way for anyone that's interested the Maersk Deliverer has been contracted to Chevron for 2 years in Angola once AP's drills are complete. We'll have to look elsewhere for Senegal drill or AGC appraisal.