Offshore rig demand improves in Gulf of Mexico for third straight week

By OGJ editors

HOUSTON, July 5 -- US utilization of mobile offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico improved for the third consecutive week with two more units under contract, said officials at Houston-based ODS-Petrodata group Friday.
There are 134 mobile offshore rigs under contract this week out of the 197 available in US gulf waters, boosting the utilization rate a full point to 68%.
On Wednesday ahead of the US July 4 holiday, Baker Hughes Inc. officials reported the number of offshore rotary rigs actually in the process of drilling increased by 3 units to 103 in the Gulf of Mexico, with a net gain of 2 to 108 for the US overall (OGJ Online, July 3, 2002). Total US drilling activity jumped this week with 862 rotary rigs working, 22 more than the previous week but still down sharply from 1,275 a year ago.
The utilization rate among offshore rigs in European waters dipped for the fourth consecutive week as another unit came off contract with no new job scheduled. That left 86 mobile offshore rigs contracted out of the 104 available in those waters, putting utilization at 82.7%.
Worldwide demand for offshore rigs increased by three units this week, with a total 532 mobile offshore rigs under contact out of a universal fleet of 656, boosting utilization to 81.1%.