Offshore drilling contractor Stena Drilling said Tuesday that oil company Tullow had hired one of its drillships for drilling offshore Suriname.
Tullow Oil has hired the Stena Forth drillship and will use it to drill one well in Block 47, located approximately 260 km north of the coast of Suriname.
The drillship, currently moored in Gibraltar, will mobilize to Suriname in late December 2020 or early January 2021 with a planned campaign start in January or February 2021.
Tullow will use the Stena Forth to drill the Goliathberg-Voltzberg North prospect (GVN-1) Tullow got hold of the Block 47 - a 2,369 sq km deepwater exploration license - in Suriname back in 2010. The company has previously said that the block had the potential to extend the Jubilee play from West Africa across the Atlantic to Suriname.
Back in 2017, Tullow drilled the Araku-1 exploration well in Suriname in Block 54. The well, drilled to a total depth of 2,685 meters using the Noble Bob Douglas drillship, came up dry.
Elsewhere in Suriname, Malaysian oil and gas giant Petronas has recently hired a Maersk Drilling rig to drill one well in Block 52 offshore Suriname later this year.
Most notably, the U.S. oil firm Apache has so far this year announced three discoveries off the South American country's northern coast -Maka Central in January and Sapakara West in April, and Kwaskwasi-1 in July.
Worth noting, the deal with Tullow is Stena Drilling's second rig contract announced on the same day. Earlier on Tuesday, the company said it had secured a 10-well P&A work for its Stena Spey semi-submersible drilling unit in Ireland. More on that here.