A sharp decline in shallow drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and declining rig dayrates led to a 3.1% drop in Global Marine’s worldwide SCORE report, or Summary of Current Offshore Rig Economics, for October 2001 from the September SCORE. The SCORE for the Gulf of Mexico plummeted 16% and is down 13.7% from last October and 33.2% from the five-year average

“The worldwide SCORE continues to be dragged down by reduced shelf drilling activity and weakening dayrates in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Global Marine Chairman, President and CEO Bob Rose. “While still well ahead of the trough reached in June 1999, the Gulf of Mexico SCORE sank to 34% in October.”

The report compares the profitability of current mobile offshore drilling rig dayrates to the profitability of dayrates at the 1980-1981 peak of the offshore drilling cycle, when speculative new rig construction was common. In the 1980-1981 period, when Global Marine’s SCORE averaged 100%, new contract dayrates equaled the sum of daily cash operating costs, plus approximately $700 per day per million dollars invested.

In addition to a worldwide SCORE covering key types of competitive offshore drilling rigs in key drilling markets, a separate SCORE is calculated for certain types of rigs and certain regions to indicate the relative condition of rig markets.

Houston-based Global Marine operates 33 premium mobile drilling units include jackups, semisubmersibles, and dynamically positioned ultra-deepwater drillships. In addition, the company is the world’s leading provider of drilling management services, including turnkey, management and daywork drilling.

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