Oil and gas company Neptune Energy has been given a regulatory consent to use the Deepsea Yantai drilling rig for production drilling at its Gjøa field, offshore Norway.
According to the Petroleum Safety Authority Norway which gave the consent last week the drilling will take 240 days to complete.
Gjøa is a field in the northern part of the North Sea, 50 kilometers northeast of the Troll field. The water depth in the area is 360 metres. Production at the field started in 2010.
The Deepsea Yantai semi-submersible drilling rig is managed by the Norwegian offshore drilling firm Odfjell Drilling AS. The Deepsea Yantai is a sixth-generation semi-submersible drilling rig delivered in 2019 by CIMC Raffles in China.
The drilling rig is owned by China's CIMC but is managed by the Norwegian drilling contractor Odfjell Drilling.
The two companies last year signed a four-year management deal for the rig, under which Odfjell will also have the exclusive right to buy the rig and will have a right of first refusal on any offer to buy the rig following the exclusivity period.
According to Odfjell's fleet status report, the Deepsea Yantai should stay busy with Neptune until early 2021, with extension options available until mid-2022.
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