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CIMC Raffles to sign rig deal with COSL
Chinese offshore yard CIMC Raffles is scheduled to sign a long-awaited contract with COSL Drilling Europe (CDE) on Thursday to build a deep-water semi-submersible drilling rig for operation in the North Sea and potentially in the Barents Sea.
Xu Yihe 29 November 2011 04:52 GMT
Yard sources said the signing function, originally set on 30 November, is now set for 1 December in Beijing.
CDE doesn’t want to make a fanfare for the event, which will be witnessed by key management of both companies as the announcement could hurt the yards competing for the engineering, procurement and construction job.
Delivery of the new rig is expected in the third quarter of 2014, according to yard sources.
It is the fourth deep-water semisub order placed by COSL Drilling Europe at CIMC Raffles, and could prove to be a stepping stone for the yard to become a specialist builder of ice-class rigs geared for operation in extreme cold weather conditions in the Arctic.
The newbuild is designed to operate in extreme cold conditions, which requires technology and equipment for winterisation, and in water depths of 1500 metres, doubling the water depth of the previous three units. |
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