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West Sirius Naming Ceremony

The first of three high-performance 6th generation semi-submersible rigs built by Sembcorp Marine's subsidiary Jurong Shipyard for Norway’s Seadrill Limited was named West Sirius on December 8, 2007, by Mrs C J Hadden, wife of Mr Steve Hadden, Senior Vice President of Devon Energy Corporation.

Attended by key representatives and project team members from Seadrill and Jurong Shipyard, the naming of West Sirius marks a major milestone for Jurong Shipyard as the rig is the yard’s first turnkey semi-submersible-building project which encompasses engineering, procurement, construction, integration and commissioning (EPIC) elements.

Built based on the Friede & Goldman (F&G) ExD design, West Sirius will be chartered to Devon Energy for operations in the Gulf of Mexico upon delivery in the first quarter of 2008. This highly sophisticated rig, which incorporates the latest in deep sea drilling technologies, will be capable of drilling wells of up to 37,500 feet while operating in dynamic positioning mode in water depths of up to 10,000 feet. Engineered for stability and versatility, West Sirius is equipped with 18,000 square feet of usable deck space, with the ability to carry a variable deck load of up to 8,000 tonnes. This rig is designed with an operational displacement of 43,400 metric tons at 17 metres draft and 46,750 metric tons at 20 metres draft.

This sophisticated oil-rig was built using Jurong Shipyard’s proprietary award-winning “Load-out & Mating-in-dock” technique, in which the upper and lower hulls were simultaneously constructed and subsequently skidded and mated in the drydock. At the same time, the yard employed its newly developed “Transverse Skidding” technique to build and assemble sister rig West Taurus in close succession.

The combination of these two innovative techniques enabled the fast-track construction and sequential assembly of multiple semi-submersibles, while meeting high standards of quality, safety and precision. This pioneering rig-building technique accelerated the delivery time for the semi-submersibles by 4 months, enabling Jurong Shipyard to deliver 2 semi-submersible rigs in a year.

Mr Wong Weng Sun, Managing Director of Jurong Shipyard, said: “The award-winning proprietary rig-building technique for constructing multiple semi-submersibles, deployed to fast-track the delivery of West Sirius, represents an industry breakthrough and underscores a sharpening of our competitive edge and turnkey capability as a leading player in the global offshore and marine industry.”

“Our success is only possible with the exceptional cooperation and collaboration received from our valued vendors, contractors and partners, Seadrill and Devon, and their faith in our ability to deliver,” added Mr Wong.

At the naming ceremony, Mr Kjell E Jacobsen, Chief Executive Officer and President of Seadrill Limited, said: “The supply-demand balance for oil and gas will remain high. This will result in high energy prices in the long term. The level of activity in the oil and gas industry will have to increase significantly both in the exploration and production in order to meet the ever-increasing demand for oil and gas. As a result more rigs will be needed.”

West Sirius is the third high-performance ultra-deepwater semi-submersible rig built by Jurong Shipyard since it first ventured into rig building in 2002. Earlier in 2005, the yard had delivered to GlobalSantaFe Corporation two units of 5th generation F&G Ex-D design ultra-deepwater semi-submersible rigs constructed using its “Load-out & Mating-in-dock” technique.