A global shortage of rigs has led to the delay of oil drilling activities in East Africa as well as slower growth and rising costs for oil and gas companies working in the booming exploration area
According to a report by Reuters, companies exploring for oil and gas reserves in East Africa have been forced to queue up for rig resources and pay over the odds when procuring rigs.
The region has become one of the hottest new exploration areas within the oil and gas industry, which has been further bolstered by the recent discovery of oil in Kenya by Anglo-Irish explorer Tullow Oil, and gas discoveries in Mozambique and Tanzania.
Terry Bonno, VP of marketing at Transocean, told Reuters, “The availability of ultra-deepwater rigs for 2012 is very constrained.
“Limited availability is pushing rates up quickly, as evidenced by a few fixtures for short-term programmes above the US$600,000 a day level.”
Bonno, whose company has one ship located off the Mozambique coast, noted that the wait for a rig could sometimes last longer than a year in spite of industry plans to build a more than 50 new rigs in the region before the end of the year.
In March, Anadarko Petroleum VP of international exploration, Frank Patterson, told Petroleum Africa that company plans to begin drilling off the coast of Kenya in late 2012 or early 2013 were “dependent on rig availability”.
Anadarko, which has two drillships under contract off the coast of Mozambique, has had to wait until one of the ships completed its current work before it could shift its focus further north.
