Is the Offshore Boom Back?

Worldwide oil and gas drilling contractor GlobalSantaFe Corporation today reported that the company's worldwide SCORE, or Summary of Current Offshore Rig Economics, for June 2003 was up 3.0% from the previous month's SCORE. GlobalSantaFe's SCORE compares the profitability of current mobile offshore drilling rig dayrates to the profitability of dayrates at the 1980-1981 peak of the offshore drilling cycle. In the 1980-1981 period, when SCORE averaged 100 percent, new contract dayrates equaled the sum of daily cash operating costs plus approximately $700 per day per million dollars invested. In addition to a worldwide SCORE covering key types of competitive offshore drilling rigs in key drilling markets, a separate SCORE is calculated for certain types of rigs and certain regions to indicate the relative condition of rig markets. The release, which is made available for publication on the third Monday of each month, includes separate SCORE calculations for the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, the North Sea, West Africa and Southeast Asia. Rig types include jackup and semisubmersible rigs.