Drilling Rigs Upgades are always behind these days.
Ruby: In 2005, a US drilling contractor could throw lots of cash around and it would bring in lots of extra manpower which would speed up a drilling rig upgrade. But for the past year, my experience has been that it's almost par for the course when a big ($4B-$6B) US drilling company [and its shipyard] runs a month (or 2 or 3) behind schedule. It's even worse when the ship/rig in question was built back in the 70s.
Consider:
1. Aban is roughly [to my knowledge] a US$500M player
2. Singapore's shipyards have huge backlogs of construction work for HUGE global companies. Engineering skill and physical manpower are spread thin amongst all the yards.
3. Sembawang, where Abraham is being upgraded, has big clients (Shell, BP, BHP, and a slew of other shipping companies), and guess who the shipyard is going to service more quickly? My guess is it's not Aban.
IMHO, while we ride a minnow that's not part of the big-league offshore exploration game yet, we have to be extremely patient with the upgrade process. That said, if anyone is visiting that yard in the near future, you could stop in and check on our drillship. We would all love to know how the repair progressing.
Go ERHE!
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