PPL Shipyard to build US$364mln 2 jack-up rigs

Deal with options another 3 jack-up rigs from Atwood Oceanics reaffirms confidence in market.

Sembcorp Marine's subsidiary PPL Shipyard has secured two turnkey contracts with a combined value up to US$364 million to build two jack-up rigs with options for another three jack-up rigs from Atwood Oceanics Pacific Limited ("AOPL"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Atwood Oceanics Inc.

Scheduled for delivery in September 30 and December 31 of 2012, the jack-up rigs will be built based on PPL Shipyard's latest proprietary design, the Pacific Class 400. These new rigs will be capable of operating in deeper waters of 400 feet and equipped with offline handling features. They will have accommodation for 150 men as compared with 120 men in the Pacific Class 375 jack-up rigs, according to a Sembcorp Marine report.

With the contract value of each of the first two jack-up rigs ranging up to US$182 million and up to approximately US$200 million for each of the three options, the total estimated value of the five jack-up rigs, including options for three units, will be slightly below US$1 billion.

Dr Benety Chang, Deputy Chairman of PPL Shipyard said "We are pleased that Atwood Oceanics has chosen PPL's Pacific Class 400 design to be part of their fleet expansion programme. The confidence in this rig design and its capabilities could lead to more of such orders for our proprietary design.”

Rob Saltiel, President and CEO of Atwood Oceanics, Inc., commented “We look forward to expanding our high-specification jack-up fleet with these Pacific Class 400 drilling rigs. This jack-up design combines excellent capability, efficiency and flexibility that will allow Atwood to better serve our clients. PPL Shipyard has an excellent reputation for quality and responsiveness, and we expect they will be a great partner for Atwood in this strategic endeavor."

This contract by Atwood Oceanics is potentially the largest order of rigs since the credit crunch of 2008. This reaffirms confidence in the jack-up rig market and in particular the high specification rigs.

Reaching the people who run Asia's businesses is harder than it used to be.

Inboxes are crowded. Attention is short. The executives you most want to reach — the founders, CFOs, and operators who actually move budgets — are the hardest to find through the usual channels. If you're building a company, a category, or a reputation, you already know this.

We've spent twenty years building the room they read. Singapore Business Review is where senior decision makers in Singapore and across Southeast Asia come for business coverage they can't get elsewhere — in print, online, and in person at the summits and roundtables we host across seven markets.

If you have something these readers should know about — a point of view worth publishing, a product worth their attention, an event worth their time — we'd like to hear what you're trying to do.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia