Prospect of offshore oil exploration in 2020

Offshore drilling activity has been in the doldrums, according to the rig belt, but as activity increases, oil production is likely to peak in 2020 and then slow down as well as shale oil, which could significantly rewrite market supply forecasts. According to IHS's forecast, the total demand for drilling rigs will increase by 16% from 473 in 2019 to 550 in 2021. Jeremy lake, vice president of Transocean, confirmed that the number of active floating rigs increased by 6% in the first half of this year and predicted that market utilization would exceed 80%. Lake also expects that the demand for jack up rigs will increase from 345 in 2019 to 388 in 2021, the number of floating platforms will increase from 69 to 84, and the number of drilling vessels will increase from 59 to 78. The growing interest in offshore drilling is largely due to the industry's success in reducing costs by 30-40% and increasing productivity. Brad Alexander, vice president of Transocean, said: "we may have seen about 30% improvement in the performance of some high-specification drilling platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico and around the world."

The offshore drilling platform market consists of four parts: jack up platform, floating platform, semi submersible platform and drilling vessel. In Europe and the Far East, the demand for jack up platforms is likely to stabilize in the next two years. With the increase of activities in the North Sea, the number of jack up platforms will increase by 1 to 30. In contrast, demand in the Far East is expected to decline by 3 units to 43 units in North America, which is unlikely to change much, with overall demand fluctuating between 10 and 11 units. Similarly, South America's demand for Jack UPS is expected to remain stagnant and fluctuate between two and four over the next two years. In South America, especially in the Suriname basin of Guyana, forecasters expect at least five floating platforms to work for ExxonMobil by 2021. In Brazil, Petrobras will replace its retired floating platform. However, as foreign oil and gas companies enter Brazil's subsea, the number of semi submersibles is likely to increase significantly, from four to 10 in 2021. Similarly, demand for drilling vessels is likely to rise, from 14 this year to at least 23, depending on the success of Brazil's next licensing rounds.

The number of drilling vessels operating off the coast of West Africa is likely to increase from 11 this year to 16 in 2021, while the number of drilling vessels is likely to increase from 11 to at least 16. As for the semi submersible market, forecasters expect it to remain stable, but the recent discovery of brulpadda by total off the coast of Ghana, off the coast of Springfield, South Africa, may bring new potential work. Elsewhere in Africa, long-term development plans for the sea areas of Angola, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Mauritania will begin by the end of 2020. In the Gulf of Mexico, the number of floating platforms is likely to increase with upcoming exploration drilling. Elsewhere in the Trinidad waters, two floating and two drilling vessels are expected to be used in the next few years. However, in practice, the demand for rigs will depend on the success of new exploration activities. The consensus of the industry is that unless the production cost of offshore drilling platform is further reduced, there will be no significant improvement in the demand for offshore drilling platform.