GOVERNMENTS SEEN MORE INVOLVED IN OIL DRILLING
The offshore oil drilling industry
will attract increasing numbers of government connected firms
in the 1990s, according to Ronald Tappmeyer, Vice Chairman of
Reading and Bates Drilling Co.
     Tappmeyer told the Offshore Technology Conference that
contract drilling was reaching the same kind of situation that
oil producing companies reached when their oilfields were
nationalized in nations as Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
     He said local connections to the nation whose waters are
being drilled was an increasingly important factor in the
market.
     "We have seen contractors put at competitive disadvantages
in nations in which they had worked successfully for years
essentially moved aside to make room for locally-owned firms or
a locally-built rig," he said.
     Tappmeyer, who is president of the International
Association of Drilling Contractors, said how far the trend
would spread depends on the growth of trade protectionism.
     He added that international contractors will increasingly
find their role restricted to regions that require special
expertise and experience, such as wildcat areas and severe
environments such as in the Arctic and extremely deep waters.
     Tappmeyer also said he expects producing companies to
provide the main financing for offshore drilling in the coming
decade as banks will be unwilling to repeat overexposing
themselves and drilling contractors will have difficulty
providing financing out of cash flow.
     At the same time, he said he saw the financing as indirect
as he does not see producers getting back in the rig-owning
business.
     He also said projectfinancing will have to be backed up
by work commitments to guarantee the payoff of construction
costs.
     For the time being, he said there was a superabundance of
rigs. But he said there will be a need for new, technologically
advanced rigs within a few years.
     He said the floating-drilling rigs were most likely to
benefit from new developments in technology, adding that by
2,000 there should not be an ocean left that is too deep, too
cold, too stormy or too remote to be explored.
 Reuter
