Marianas rig damage may delay Ghana drilling

From Bloomberg:

Kosmos Energy Ltd. said damage to Transocean Ltd. (RIG)’s Marianas rig may delay drilling of a well off Ghana’s coast.

A force majeure notice was delivered to the government of Ghana and Ghana National Petroleum Corp. after an anchor- handling accident damaged the rig, Dallas-based Kosmos said today in a statement. The Marianas was scheduled to arrive July 10 for drilling, Kosmos said.

Kosmos said it anticipates that either the Marianas or a substitute rig will be “available soon” to drill the Cedrela-1 well in the West Cape Three Points Block. Transocean, based in Vernier, Switzerland, reported yesterday it evacuated 108 of 121 workers on the rig after it took on water while preparing to leave an Eni SpA drilling site off Ghana.

The market for deep-water rigs in that part of the world is so tight that Kosmos will likely have to wait at least a month for a comparable drilling vessel, said Brian Uhlmer, an analyst at Global Hunter Securities in Houston. Moving an unused rig from the Gulf of Mexico could take about 45 days.

“There’s literally nothing in Ghana that can come back to work quickly,” Uhlmer said. “I think the most likely is to pull something from the Gulf.”

The Marianas rig, which was used in 2009 to start drilling the Macondo well for BP Plc in the Gulf of Mexico, may be out of service for as many as 180 days with most of the time taken up by moving it to a yard and final inspections, Uhlmer said. “It’s not like fixing your kid’s soccer ball,” he said.