TENDER-assist offshore drilling is a niche market dominated by Malaysia's Sapura Drilling, and its chief executive Raphael Siri is excited about the potential for further geographic diversification and fleet expansion. The tender-assist drilling market does not receive as much attention as the jack-up drilling sector, but Siri does not mind having a low profile. "We are the biggest tender-assist drilling company in the world - we have more than half the worldwide assets, and a lot more than half the worldwide contracts. But you have to remember, it's only about 3% of the global drilling market," the 52-year-old Frenchman says. The denning characteristic of tender-assist rigs is that they are tailored for production and development wells, operating alongside host shallow-water platforms, tension-leg platforms or spars on which their drilling equipment can be mounted. Siri emphasises that tender-assist rigs are "very versatile". "These are real drilling units, and can accommodate 120 to 160 people on board," he says. "We can drill long wells -three, four, five kilometres. Nowadays we can drill further, more complex, into different geology, and all this from the same platform."
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