The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[OakesCS]

I don't know doodly about Atwood and it would probably be inappropriate for me to comment if I did.

I'm not impressed by the writer. On the substance front: a lot of deep water drillers have new ships. The writer says Noble and TransOcean have ships that are 30 yrs old. So what? They also have several that just came out of the yards. The bit about when contracts come up is relevant but this goes back to what I've pointed out before about the E&P companies having leverage over the past ~6 yrs because of the current demand/pricing situation. I'd bet every driller has had most of their contracts come up for renewal in that time. Unless Venezuela goes down the crapper and a war starts in the Ukraine, I don't see a change coming soon. I suspect the drill ship biz is or will be like airlines without the ugliness caused by government ownership: the renters will choose by performance quality and adherence to scheduling (or at least being least horrible on that front). Conversely, some NOCs might have some non-standard drivers for their drilling programs so anybody looking to invest in a driller might want to look at whether that driller is "favored" by certain countries with large offshore oil reserves/opportunities and motivations to drill those targets regardless of market conditions.