Last week saw Noble Corporation cement its place as the great consolidator in the offshore drilling industry recovery. Seven days ago, Noble announced that it was buying Diamond Offshore Drilling in a stock plus cash transaction valuing the company at around US$1.6 billion, a deal unanimously...
Vantage Drilling
COLUMN | Big is better? Big finds in Namibia; big losses at Gazprom; big sale at Edda Wind; big problems at Petrofac [Offshore Accounts]
Every day, the world uses around one hundred million barrels of oil. The term “big oil” is used pejoratively to describe the industry’s lobbying power. But is big always better? This week, we look at both the biggest and the best, and the biggest and the worst of the oil industry. Big finds:...
COLUMN | Quick updates: Total buys a rig; Trident cans a rig; Standard sales succeed and fail; Saipem wins and loses corruption battles; Sapura hit with wind arbitration [Offshore Accounts]
Gong Xi Fa Cai, Kung Hei Fat Choi, and Chúc mừng Năm Mới! Happy Lunar New Year to all our readers, and welcome to the Year of the Dragon. At least, this is one time of year where nobody will be sneaking abandoned offshore rigs and supply vessels out of Chinese shipyards to the market […]
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COLUMN | Namibia and Nigeria – Plunder on the dancefloor, kicks on the drill floor? [Offshore Accounts]
Oh, to be young today! I know, I know, I know, I know, Sophie Ellis Bextor’s 2001 single “Murder on the Dancefloor” is back topping the charts after it appeared in a post cinematic rip-off of The Talented Mr. Ripley, and David Guetta is filling the dancefloors with his Grammy nominated “Baby Don’t...
COLUMN | The Twelve Days of Christmas 2023: Days 4 to 6: Seadrill, Gulf Drilling International and ADES; five shipping magnates on future fuels; six corrupted states and Al Jazeera [Offshore Accounts]
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me… a partridge in a pear tree, according to the ancient English carol, but at Baird Maritime, that’s the cue for a dozen topical features about the offshore industry. Lovers of festive traditions get scrolling, as for the fourth year in a row, we […]
COLUMN | Get the PSVs to the Greek; get the drillships to the Belgian; get the sunken treasure to the Briton: Standard Supply, Vantage Drilling and Ocean Infinity [Offshore Accounts]
According to his carefully edited Wikipedia entry, Evangelos Marinakis “is a Greek media mogul, shipowner, lyricist, and member of the Piraeus city council. He is the founder and owner of Capital Maritime and Trading Corporation and also the owner of the football clubs Olympiacos in Greece and Nottingham Forest in England.” And now he is […]
COLUMN | Indonesia: Where King Coal will be dethroned by gas? ENI and Genting move towards production, Inpex progresses Abadi LNG, and Harbour explores further in the Andaman Sea [Offshore Accounts]
In the ten months since we last ran a country feature on Indonesia, a lot has happened in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country, which also happens to be the world’s third largest democracy, and the world’s biggest coal exporter by volume. As an aside, China is the world’s largest coal producer, but uses nearly […]
COLUMN | Namcor’s woes as chair arrested for drugs and managing director suspended over Angolan deal: will Namibia emulate Nigeria or Norway? [Offshore Accounts]
This Easter, after looking at three companies that experienced miracles last week, we move to an entire country that stands on the cusp of a miraculous transformation: Na ..
COLUMN | The Twelve Days of Christmas 2022, Final Edition: Havfram, Eneti, Cyan Renewables, Taiwanese wind, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners; DOF’s rebel shareholders; Seadrill and Aquadrill reunited, Odjfell resurgent! [Offshore Accounts]
Merry Christmas! On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me… twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping, ten lords a-leaping and so on, all the way bac ..
COLUMN | Riding the rollercoaster (again): ARO, Deep Value Driller, Dolphin, UDS, MEO and Uniwise [Offshore Accounts]
Last week (here), we looked at the recovery of the drilling market, epitomised by the return to a public listing of Dolphin Drilling in Oslo on September 15. A few days l ..