The Dolphin Drilling-owned semisub, Blackford Dolphin, has finally started its $154m long-term drilling contract with Oil India after being delayed by a legal spat with Nigeria’s General Hydrocarbons Limited (GHL).
Dolphin Drilling said the rig arrived in Indian waters in October and has since completed customs clearance and client acceptance.
The company has prior experience operating in Indian waters and has reinforced its local presence through a strategic partnership with Dynamic Drilling, an Indian offshore drilling contractor.
“Blackford Dolphin has once again returned to India to begin a long-term drilling campaign, and our ambition is that the rig will stay in the region for the long term, not only due to the contract’s option period but also in line with India’s ambitious energy goals,” said Bjørnar Iversen, CEO of Dolphin Drilling.
The offshore driller now has two semi-subs on long-term contracts. Apart from the Blackford Dolphin, the Paul B. Loyd, Jr. rig is currently on a firm contract with Harbour Energy in the UK until February 2028.
Negotiations over the contract between Dolphin Drilling and Oil India started back in October last year. Initially, the work was supposed to start as early as the second quarter of 2024. But there is a reason why it started this late.
Namely, this latest development follows a long and very complicated court spat between GHL and Dolphin Drilling. In April, the driller terminated a contract for the rig with the Nigerian company over missed payments.
The Nigerian company took the Norwegian firm to court in an attempt to force Dolphin Drilling to complete the work under the terminated deal. Then, Technova Africa got involved and obtained an ex parte order of arrest against the rig which was lifted in mid-June.
In July, the Norwegian rig owner said that it submitted a bank guarantee of $20m which enabled the firm to remove the 1974-built rig from Nigerian waters.
