Transocean Ltd. announced that it has completed the previously disclosed transaction to sell its jackup fleet to Borr Drilling Limited ("Borr") for a total consideration of approximately $1.35 billion. The sale included the company's 10 high-specification jackups and five jackups under construction at Keppel FELS Limited's ("Keppel") shipyard in Singapore.
The company received cash of approximately $320 million associated with the sale. Additionally, the transaction transfers to Borr the company's remaining financial obligations related to the five jackups under construction at Keppel. Transocean is expected to continue operating the three jackups working in Thailand until the current drilling contracts expire and will reflect the associated revenue and expenses in income from continuing operations.
"The sale of our jackup fleet is consistent with our strategic goal of remaining the industry's undisputed leader in the ultra-deepwater and harsh environment markets, where our high quality assets, unmatched operational experience and trusted customer relationships provide us with a clear competitive advantage," said Jeremy Thigpen, President and Chief Executive Officer.
"Further," added Mark Mey, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, "this transaction is consistent with our goal of enhancing liquidity to provide greater strategic optionality. We have taken an impairment of approximately $1.6 billion in relation to the sale of the jackup fleet to Borr, but continue to remain comfortably within our debt to tangible capitalization ratio in our revolving credit facility."
About Transocean
Transocean (NYSE:RIG) is a leading international provider of offshore contract drilling services for oil and gas wells. The company specializes in technically demanding sectors of the global offshore drilling business with a particular focus on deepwater and harsh environment drilling services, and believes that it operates one of the most versatile offshore drilling fleets in the world.
Transocean owns or has partial ownership interests in, and operates a fleet of 46 mobile offshore drilling units consisting of 30 ultra-deepwater floaters, seven harsh environment floaters, three deepwater floaters and six midwater floaters. In addition, the company has four ultra-deepwater drillships under construction or under contract to be constructed.
About Borr Drilling
Borr Drilling Limited is an international drilling contractor to the oil and gas industry, with the ambition of acquiring and operating modern drilling assets. The industry is currently under significant stress, and Borr Drillingwishes to establish a platform upon which itcan capitalise on identified opportunities. By uniting record low asset prices with a capable operating organisation, itwill take advantage of opportunities in a rapidly changing oil and gas industry. With our fleet of rigs we will deliver safe and high quality drilling operations to its customers.