Pacific Drilling Announces Dhirubhai Deepwater KG1 begins five-year contract /

Pacific Drilling Limited (“Pacific Drilling”) today announced that the ultra-deepwater drillship Dhirubhai Deepwater KG1 has commenced operations in India under a five-year drilling contract with Reliance Industries Limited (“Reliance”). The rig will initially work for four years for Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited under a farm-out arrangement between ONGC and Reliance, before returning to Reliance for the final year of its contract.

The Dhirubhai Deepwater KG1 is the first of two ultra-deepwater newbuild drillships owned by a joint venture company with Transocean Limited and scheduled to commence operations in 2009 and 2010.

The dynamically positioned, double-hulled drillships Dhirubhai Deepwater KG1 and Dhirubhai Deepwater KG2 feature National Oilwell Varco drilling packages that include advanced offshore drilling technology, including significant off-line tubular-handling and stand-building capabilities, advanced mud system designs, advanced systems for building, storing and running several subsea trees and efficient riser and BOP (blowout preventer) handling systems. The drillships have a variable deckload of approximately 20,000 metric tons.

The Dhirubhai Deepwater KG1 is capable of working in water depths of up to 12,000 feet and is outfitted to construct wells in up to 10,000 feet water depth and up to 35,000 feet deep. The Dhirubhai Deepwater KG2, which is under construction at Samsung Heavy Industries’ shipyard in South Korea, will be capable and equipped to work in water depths of up to 12,000 feet and outfitted to construct wells up to 35,000 feet deep.

In addition, Pacific Drilling has another four ultra-deepwater newbuild drillships, all of which are being constructed at Samsung Heavy Industries and are scheduled to be delivered over the next two years. These units are the Pacific Bora, Pacific Scirocco, Pacific Mistral and Pacific Santa Ana.

Pacific Drilling Limited is a pure-play ultra-deepwater drillship operator. Our fleet of six latest generation drillships and experienced management and operating team set us apart from the typical new-entrant contract driller. The company is developing an industry leading management system to support its vision is to be the preferred ultra-deepwater drilling contract.