Huge scepticism over Cairn tender for 4 wells
Nine drillers have shown interest in a Cairn India tender to hire a jack-up to drill at the producing CB-OS/2 permit despite scepticism over the company's intention to award an actual contract.
Cairn organised a pre-bid at its Gurgaon office on January 12, attended by Dynamic Drilling, Aban Offshore, Greatship India, Jindal Drilling, Shelf Drilling, Transocean, Seadrill Offshore, Saipem and Vantage Drilling. "The meeting began at 2.30pm and ended around 6pm," says a source present.
Cairn wants to drill three firm and one optional development wells at the CB-OS/2 permit, home to the Lakshmi oil and gasfield producing an average of 9000 b/d of oil and 250,000 cm/d of gas. Interested drillers must submit bids on February 3.
Those who attended were impressed with Cairn's presentation. "Cairn's team had 10 members," says a driller.
"They gave a presentation and also shared locations of the proposed wells to be drilled from the Lakshmi-B platform." Cairn general manager (well construction) SL Narayan and drilling head Clifford Lang led the presentation, accompanied by colleagues from the contracts department.
"Lang did most of the talking," we hear. Some doubt Cairn’s sincerity.
EoIs for this project were first issued in mid-2014 and then after issuing a tender in December 2014 Cairn scrapped the tender without reason. Last September Cairn invited EoIs again before issuing a tender on December 31, 2015.
