The Pearl may be gone, but Aban Offshore is trying its best to salvage the contract. According to sources, the company is trying to see if it could get another rig to continue from where Aban Pearl left off. The contract of Aban Offshore's rig, Aban Pearl, which sank into the waters of the Carribbean Sea on Thursday, was a significant one. It was drilling for Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) at a day rate of $357,000. The contract was up to January 2015.
Aban Offshore, which ended up with debt of about $3 billion after its 2006 acquisition of the Norwegian drilling services company, Sinvest, is now clawing its way out of the pit after the recent debt-restructure exercise. The assured cash flow from Aban Pearl was very important to the de-leveraging process.
Aban Offshore's officials said that another rig could possibly be brought to serve in Pearl's place, but they wished to reveal no details. Aban has two deepwater assets – Aban Abraham and Deep Venture. The contract of Deep Venture was recently terminated by Maersk Oil. Aban Offshore has 50 per cent stake in the latter. When it terminated the drilling contract (on April 20), Maersk agreed to pay $64 million to Aban as termination fee.
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