RE: ADTI is GSFYou are right, ADTI is a drilling contractor and a subsidary of GSF, operating the GSF Galaxy II (among others) in the North Sea.
The advertise with their "turnkey drilling" concept, that means they will charge you on a "per well" basis, instead of a "per day" basis.
That is good, as it gives you control about the costs of drilling a well, disadvantage is that you have no control over the rig (in a long term).
For example, remember the problems of getting the rig to Ridgewood (I posted the whole story nearly on a daily basis here).
Due to bad weather, the rig couldn't be moved and rig handlers had to be called and canceled a few times.
There was a delay of a few weeks, but it was at ADTIs cost, not the customers (Lundin, IFR, GUL, MNL).
About some comments here, that sound like whistling in the dark (no offense meant):
Weather: Stop drilling because of bad weather and instead move the rig? Hohum, that really makes no sense. We stopped drilling with Oilexco in October or November because of harsh weather. But there we had 10m waves. Nobody would be able to move a rig under that conditions, we had problems with less harsh weather moving the Galaxy II.
Problems while drilling: Not impossible, but IMHO very unlikely. Not seen it for a long time in the NS. Most problems can be fixed.
Boats sit there for 10 days waiting: We have a spot market for those vesels and they are very busy (and expensive).
Look at some facts from a todays NR: https://www.offshore247.com/news/article.asp?Id=9472
DSS made an average of US$45,800 per ship per day in 2007. And you need usually 3 to pull that rig.
About the drilling program: It was planned to drill one well, without sidetracks, fisrt to about 5500 ft into the Volgian sands.
During drilling the area, they will recover and analyse what comes up from the hole, maybe retrieve some cores and run other logging while drilling methods to find out if there are hydrocarbons present.
And they know, even without casing and testing a well, if there is oil or not.
So the plan was (or is) to drill to the first shallower zone, check there for oil and if (and ONLY if) there are good traces of oil, they would continue to drill deeper to the beatrice sands (let me guess out of mind) 9000 ft.
That is the TD, expected to take 28 days.
After reaching the TD, they would maybe start flowtests, or a DST.
Testing each zone from bottom to top.
To make it more clear again: They only applied for one well at the officials, you must not drill wells in the NS as you like, you have to do alot of paperwork first and all is published on the web.
(https://www.og.dti.gov.uk)
I would say, 95% sure this is a duster. We had similar situations with the last two wells. Rig move announced before scheduled drilling time was reached through 3rd party information, before official NR was out.
Also funny to hear that management will be back in office on tuesday and can't be contacted until then.
Tuesday is the scheduled release of the rig.
I think we had this experience also in the past.
Kind regards, keep your ears stiff.
BTW: That Petro Canada thing with Maria is also shaky. PC has the Arctic III rig only until end of Feb. It just started a well near Ridgewood, if it won't finish it until end of this month, then Maria will be delayed to the second half (Q2/3) of this year.