Stena Drilling, a subsidiary of Sweden’s Stena, has announced it would be upgrading its 7th generation drillship Stena Evolution to enable drilling and completing wells requiring 20,000 psi pressure controls.
to enable drilling and completing wells requiring 20,000 psi pressure controls.The drillship is already equipped to handle a wide range of drilling operations, including exploration, development, and production activities in offshore oil and gas fields worldwide.
The upgrade will start with the installation of the 20,000-psi subsea blow-out preventer and other equipment in 2026. The upgrades will be supported by equipment supplier NOV and supermajor Shell.
When this new 20,000-psi equipment package is installed, the drillship will be able to perform completion operations on Shell’s Sparta field in the US Gulf of Mexico.
In May last year, Stena Drilling fixed the 2023-built floater for five years with Shell in the US Gulf of Mexico, starting in the second quarter of 2024. It was delivered to the company in January this year. The company picked up the stranded drillship that was originally ordered by Ocean Rig and subsequently relinquished by Transocean in December 2021 for around $245m.
Sparta, the project the drillship is being upgraded for, will be Shell’s 15th deep-water host in the Gulf of Mexico and is currently scheduled to begin production in 2028. A final investment decision for the Sparta project was made in December 2023. It is operated by Shell with a 51% stake while its only partner is Equinor with 49%.
At peak production of approximately 90,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and currently has an estimated, discovered recoverable resource volume of 244m boe. The project will use previously used designs which is an enhanced replication of Vito and Whale projects. The Sparta FPU will replicate about 95% of Whale’s hull and 85% of its topsides.
