Falling behind its initial downtime prediction, Transocean Inc. said last week that its deepwater drillship Discoverer Enterprise remains on location in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico at zero dayrate while continuing the investigation with respect to the riser separation which occurred on May 21.

The shutdown occurred on the BP-operated Thunder Horse field at Mississippi Canyon block 822 in the Gulf. The companies reported no injuries and no hydrocarbons were released due to the incident. In addition, a visual inspection of the wellhead with a remote-operated vehicle showed no wellhead damage.

Initially expected to be down for only two to three weeks from the May shutdown date, the company said last Monday it now believes the restoration could be complete “within the next two to three weeks.” Transocean added that a significant portion of the riser string has been recovered and preparations are being made to recommence operations after completing some riser component treatment based on the results of the investigation to date.

As a precautionary measure, the company said it plans to schedule some downtime to inspect the seven other drillships in its fleet that use the same type of riser. However, it does not believe such downtime will be significant. Once the investigation and inspections are complete, the company will determine what modifications, if any, will be required.

The eight Transocean drillships that use this type of riser are the three Enterprise-class rigs (Discoverer Enterprise, Discoverer Sprit, Discoverer Deep Seas), the four Pathfinder-class rigs (Deepwater Discovery, Deepwater Frontier, Deepwater Millennium, Deepwater Pathfinder) and the Deepwater Expedition.

Discussing the impact on the company’s second quarter results, Transocean said the unexpected rig downtime and an approximate $10 million loss of revenue due to the Nigeria labor strike would likely put revenues for the quarter ended June 30 at or slightly below first quarter 2003 revenue levels. Transocean had previously stated that it expected deterioration in its financial results and identified a number of factors that were likely to lead to such a decline in results.

In other news, Transocean was continuing to investigate an explosion that occurred late Tuesday on one of its natural gas inland barges in Galveston Bay, which claimed the life of an employee. The Transocean barge was drilling a natural gas development well, according to the company. Apparently, the explosion had no effect on gas production because the well had not reached its target depth.

The well-control incident, which resulted in a fire, occurred on a rig Transocean was operating for TransTexas Gas Corp. Transocean said 22 people were on the rig at the time, with four taken to area hospitals. Three employees were released and one was still hospitalized. Boots and Coots had extinguished the fire by Wednesday night. TransTexas retained well and pollution control specialists immediately after the incident and were on site along with officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. A Transocean spokesman said late last week there was no indication as to what caused the explosion.

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