Falling Crane Damages Rig at Sembcorp
Noble Drilling reported Tuesday that its newbuild jackup rig Noble Lloyd Noble, nearing completion at Singapore's Sembcorp Marine Jurong shipyard, sustained damage in the collapse of a shipyard crane boom.
The damage was confined to one area of the rig and included damage to one of the rig's cranes, Noble said. Several shipyard workers suffered minor injuries and all personnel working on the rig were evacuated.
The Singapore Ministry of Manpower has commenced an investigation into the cause of the incident and access to the rig is limited at present, the firm said.
The Noble Lloyd Noble is a “newbuild ultra-high specification jackup rig” for use in predrilling Statoil's Mariner ultra-heavy oil find offshore U.K., with a start date scheduled for the second half of 2016 and no later than March 1, 2017. The firm said that a full damage assessment will be needed before it can determine a revised schedule for delivery and commissioning. The rig is expected to cost $700 million.
In February, Sembcorp reported a net loss of $300 million for fiscal 2015. The firm faces headwinds due to the downturn in the offshore industry and to difficulty in securing payment for drillships ordered by the beleaguered firm Sete Brasil, which may be nearing a bankruptcy filing. Sembcorp posted an impairment of $330 million for Sete's vessels alone in calculating its year-end results; analysts predict that even completing halfway-built rigs and looking for a buyer could be tough in the current market, with less than 80 percent utilization worldwide as of the latest numbers.