Scottish oil firm Cairn Energy has booked Stena Drilling for a UK North Sea exploration well later this year.
The Stena Don semi-submersible rig is about to start a drilling campaign with Total E&P UK and should move onto Cairn’s Chimera prospect in the third quarter.
Stena’s last job for Cairn took place off the coast in Senegal in 2017 and involved the Stena DrillMAX unit.
Erik Ronsberg, managing director of Aberdeen-headquartered Stena Drilling, said he was delighted to have clinched the deal “hot of the heels” of last week’s contract win with Ping Petroleum for the Stena Spey.
Mr Ronsberg said a recent upgrade to Stena Don, with an anchor moor system, had “widened the market significantly” for the vessel and helped it bag the Cairn deal.
“With Don set to spud a well at the end of this month, our fleet of drilling units will all be back in operation, with full attention given to delivering safe and high operational performance,” he added.
Cairn owns 60% of Chimera, having agreed to farm out a 40% non-operated interest in the licence to Canadian firm Suncor Energy at the end of last year.
Edinburgh-headquartered Cairn previously said it was targeting 154 million barrels of oil equivalent from Chimera, which is located east of Shetland, near the Ninian field.
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