Transocean’s revenues have fallen 29% in the third quarter of the year as the company continues to be challenged by the decline in oil price.
The oil driller said fleet utilisation was down to 70% compared with 75% in the previous quarter and the year-ago period.
The company has already reduced its number of rigs taking a number out of service as well as scrapping others.
A year after oil sank into a bear market, the industry is still hunkering down for a long period of low prices, with Europe’s biggest producer seeing only the first glimpses of a recovery.
In the last five months, US production sank by 590,000 barrels a day, or more than 6 percent. The bad news: Drillers are cutting costs with a speed and brutality not seen in decades, enabling many to continue producing at a high level even as prices remain low.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sees crude falling by another $10 a barrel as storage tanks fill up in the coming months.
“I see the first mixed signs for recovery,” said Ben Van Beurden, Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s chief executive officer, speaking at the Oil & Money conference in London.
