The nature of the offshore energy sector, particularly for oil and gas, means that companies often explore for resources in very remote areas around the world, sometimes in extremely harsh climates. Billions of dollars are invested in vessels, machinery, personnel, technology, and communications to survey offshore sites and drill, and extract hydrocarbons from below the seabed.
In June, TotalEnergies, a French energy company, leased Noble’s Viking drillship to a well off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The contract will last 47 days and reportedly amount to an estimated value of $34.2 million. On an annual pro-rata basis, this is more than $265 million for one rig.
Noble owns around 40 rigs. A typical day rate for a modern drillship has varied from $200,000 a day a few years ago to nearly $600,000 a day today. This industry is international and almost completely a free market, so sophisticated rigs built less than 5 years ago at a cost of $600 million or more can end up being scrapped as market demand fluctuates. This has a profound knock-on effect for baseline suppliers such as communications companies.
It’s easy to see why energy operators don’t hesitate to spend $50,000 to $100,000 per month on connectivity technologies for their drilling, production, and service vessels.
Almost all these rigs, platforms, and vessels will have some form of cellular mobile services, fiber (in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico), or even microwave transmission (North Sea and Brazil). Nevertheless, all these vessels and assets are equipped with satellite connectivity capabilities.
This mix of energy generation is changing, and we will likely see more demand for service and support vessels for offshore wind, solar and other green technologies.
Valour Consultancy anticipates that nearly $650 million will be spent on satellite connectivity services for the global offshore energy market in 2025. The connectivity demand depends on the location, depth of water, lifecycle of oil and gas well, and terrain of the shore, if nearby.
In the latest Valour report – “Deep Dive: Offshore Energy,” we estimated there are more than 120 drillships active globally in 2025. In addition, there are nearly a hundred semi-submersibles active, several hundred jackups, and floating production storage and offloading units (FPSOs).
Add on a further several thousand fixed platforms (immobile drilling/production), worldwide. These are usually well-established wells that have been producing for several years.
Finally, there are a cohort of thousands of offshore energy service and support vessels. Some are designed and specialized for offshore energy purposes, or others are quickly adapted from merchant vessels for energy operators’ needs like accommodations, construction, surveying, seismic discovery, or even subsea cabling purposes.
Valour Consultancy believes the growing number of service and support vessels amounts to the largest opportunity for satellite connectivity, airtime, hardware, and other services over the next 10 years.