Offshore drilling contractor Valaris Ltd., Houston, announced it has secured a pair of drillship contracts with Anadarko Petroleum Corp., a wholly-owned subsidiary of upstream oil and gas company Occidental Petroleum Corp., Houston.
Valaris said in a press release on Sunday that it has been awarded a 940-day contract extension for its drillship Valaris DS-16, starting in June 2026, and a new 914-day contract for the drillship Valaris DS-18, which is expected to begin in the fourth quarter of 2026.
The two contracts — worth approximately $760 million combined — are for drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico, renamed by the U.S. government as the Gulf of America.
The two 752'x118'1" GustoMSC P10,000 ultra-deepwater drillships were built by Hyundai Heavy Industries and delivered in 2014 and 2015. Each is rated to drill to 40,000' in water depths up to 12,000'.
"We’ve secured approximately $1.9 billion in new contract backlog so far this year, reflecting solid execution of our commercial strategy and our ability to deliver safe and efficient operations for our customers," Anton Dibowitz, Valaris president and CEO, said in a statement. "We remain focused on securing additional attractive, long-term contracts for our high-specification assets that will further support our earnings and cash flow."
