Offshore drilling

Saipem is the only engineering and construction contractor that provides both offshore and onshore drilling services to oil companies. In the offshore drilling segment, Saipem mainly operates in West Africa, the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East and boasts significant market positions in the most complex segments of deep and ultra-deep offshore, leveraging on the outstanding technical features of its drilling platforms and vessels, capable of drilling exploration and development wells at a maximum water depth of 9,200 meters. In parallel, investments are ongoing to renew and to keep up the production capacity of other fleet equipment (upgrade equipment to the characteristics of projects or to clients’ needs and purchase of support equipment).

In 2013 revenues amounted to €1,177 million, with an increase of 8.1% from 2012. This was due to the entry in full activity of the semisubmersible rigs Scarabeo 8, Scarabeo 3 and Scarabeo 6 and the beginning of operations of Ocean Spur vessels. Orders acquired in the year amounted to €1,401 million (€1,025 million in 2012), mainly related to: (i) five-year contract extension with Eni for the charter of the drillship Saipem 10000 starting from the third quarter of 2014 for worldwide drilling activity operations; (ii) one-year contract extension on behalf of IEOC, for the utilization of the semi-submersible Scarabeo 4 in Egypt; (iii) two-year contract extension on behalf of Eni for the charter of the Saipem TAD for drilling activity offshore Congo.