By IANS
Mumbai : Leading offshore oil and gas drilling major Transocean Inc said Monday it has won a $828-million, five-year contract from Reliance Industries for a deepwater hydrocarbons basin off the Andhra Pradesh coast.
Transocean has a 50 percent stake in the ultra-deepwater drill ship – Dhirubhai Deepwater KG2 (formerly called Deepwater Pacific 2) – that has won the drilling contract from Reliance Industries, the drilling company said in a statement.
The contract is likely to start in the first quarter 2010 following the shipyard construction, sea trials, its mobilisation to India and customer acceptance.
Transocean also said that the contract for the first ultra-deepwater drill-ship owned by the joint venture – called Dhirubhai Deepwater KG1 – has been extended by another year by Reliance Industries to five years.
Both the drill-ships are being under construction at Samsung Heavy Industries’ shipyard in South Korea. A Transocean subsidiary is overseeing the construction work, which is expected to conclude in the fourth quarter of 2009.