Yahoo Finance Exxon Hires Drilling rig West Aquarius From Seadrill Partners
Exxon Mobil Corporation XOM has hired Seadrill Partners LLC’s SDLP semi-submersible drilling rig — West Aquarius — to drill a well offshore Canada.
The initial agreement is for one firm well and the company has multiple options to extend the contract. Per Seadrill Partners, the firm portion of the contract is valued at about $24 million and is scheduled to commence operations between May and July 2019.
Currently, the West Aquarius rig is operating under BP plc BP in Canada, where it is drilling a sidetrack well at Aspy D-11A. Following the drilling fluid spill incident of Jun 22, 2018, BP recently resumed operations on completion of the pending investigation into the accident after a halt.
Exxon is the world’s largest publicly traded oil company that is engaged in oil and natural gas exploration and production, petroleum products refining and marketing, chemicals manufacture as well as other energy-related businesses.
The company owns some of the most prolific upstream assets globally with a number of major projects coming online in the next few years. Exxon continues to benefit from ramped-up oil-equivalent production from Hebron field. On top of that, tight oil production in the Permian has increased significantly. The company expects these developments to support upstream businesses to boost earnings three times more from2017 level in 2025.
Seadrill Partners is engaged in owning, operating and acquiring offshore drilling rigs. The company's drilling rigs are contracted on long-term basis with major oil companies.
Price Performance
In the past year, Exxon’s shares have gained 9.9% compared with the industry’s 4.3% increase.
Zacks Rank & Stocks to Consider
ExxonMobil currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
A few other better-ranked players in the same sector is Petroleo Brasileiro S.A. PBR or Petrobras SA and TC Pipelines, LP (TCP). Both these stocks flaunt a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
Petrobras is the largest integrated energy firm in Brazil and one of the major players in Latin America. It pulled off an average positive earnings surprise of 10.4% in the last four quarters.
TC Pipelines purchases, owns and actively participates in the management of U.S.-based natural gas pipelines and related assets. The company delivered an average positive earnings surprise of 3.7% in the last four quarters.
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