Ventura Takes On Deep Value Driller and Lands $58m Petronas Job
The Oslo-listed contractor adds a second Eldorado drillship to its managed fleet
Ventura Offshore has struck a management deal with Eldorado Drilling for the seventh-generation drillship Deep Value Driller and has simultaneously secured a one-well drilling contract with Petronas in Indonesia valued at around $58m.
The Oslo-listed contractor will provide marketing and operations management services for the ultra-deepwater unit, expanding a managed fleet that already includes Eldorado's Atlantic Zonda. The arrangement is a services mandate rather than an ownership position, and Ventura will receive operating fees rather than booking the full contract value.
The award is with the Bobara subsidiary of Petronas, operator of the ultra-deepwater Bobara production sharing contract off Papua Barat. The $58m estimate includes provisional sums for additional services. Petronas brought Pertamina and TotalEnergies into Bobara last year, each taking 24.5 percent while Petronas retained 51 percent and operatorship. The block covers roughly 8,400 square kilometres and was the company's first operated deepwater acreage in Indonesia.
The contract deepens Ventura's exposure to a single country. Its SSV Catarina is already working in Indonesia, and the new job adds a second unit in the same market, which concentrates both the commercial upside and the regulatory and logistics risk that come with deepwater work in the region.
The drillship itself has had an eventful year. Eldorado agreed in February to pay $300m for the 2014-built unit after topping a previously agreed $272.5m offer from Saipem, with delivery scheduled during the third quarter. The vessel therefore arrives in the managed fleet more or less as it changes hands.
For Ventura, the model is the point. Building a managed fleet of high-specification drillships without taking the capital risk of owning them is a way to scale in a segment where day rates have recovered but asset prices have moved further and faster. Each additional unit adds fee income and utilisation data without adding a rig to the balance sheet.
This story is part of the Maritime Briefing of 8 September 2026.
