Norwegian offshore rig operator Island Drilling Company has signed a contract with Trident Energy to provide the Island Innovator drilling unit and associated services for a drilling campaign offshore Equatorial Guinea.

This will be the third project for Island Drilling Company in Africa since the rig was warm stacked at the beginning of 2020.

The work is for two firm and five optional wells and is estimated to be 250 days if all the options are exercised. It is planned to start in September/October of 2023, the rig owner informed on Tuesday.

Island Drilling CEO, Roger Simmenes, said: “We are very pleased to be selected by Trident as their first choice to provide drilling services in a market with several available semi-submersibles. We believe the performance we have shown with the wells in the UK has been noticed. It is our opinion the operators see that it does not always pay off to use the biggest and most expensive rigs. We live for smart solutions and will make sure to deliver beyond expectations.”

To remind, earlier this year, the rig worked on the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) for Dana Petroleum and then for Tailwind Energy.

The Island Innovator has recently embarked on its next assignment, entailing the drilling of an exploration well on Block 2B. According to the latest AIS data, the rig is now in the West Africa area, heading to South Africa where it is expected in late September.

Once there, it will work for Eco the Gazania-1 well, which is scheduled for the third quarter of 2022. The prospect is targeting 300 million barrels light oil resource and the well will take approximately 25 days to drill.

After that, the rig is expected in Mauritania where it will work on plugging and abandonment of four firm and one optional well in the Banda and Tiof fields. The contract is expected to begin in 4Q 2022 for an estimated duration of 75 days.