ADNOC Drilling Company confirmed the award of an estimated total contract value of $733 million, by ADNOC Offshore for three island drilling rigs in support of the growing operations at the offshore Zakum field.

The three new island rigs will operate on existing and newly constructed innovative artificial islands at the offshore Zakum field for drilling and completion of wells.

The rigs, which will be constructed by Honghua Group (HH), will incorporate industry leading technology and automation. Delivery of the rigs and commencement of operations is expected during 2026. The rigs will be designed and built as part of a partnership between ADNOC Drilling and Honghua Group.

This partnership has been specifically formed to harness the transformative nature of AI, digitisation, and advanced technology in the design and operation of these next generation drilling rigs. ADNOC Drilling and HH will look to also collaborate with AIQ, an Abu Dhabi based artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer contributing to the energy sector globally.

The design of the rig operating systems will look to utilise real-time condition, performance and utilisation data to create actionable insights, enhancing rig performance and increasing efficiency, leading to improvements in safety and well delivery times.

Additionally, drilling operations on ADNOC’s innovative artificial islands create the ideal conditions for extended reach drilling (ERD), with the top five longest wells in the world being delivered from these islands off the coast of Abu Dhabi, the most recently delivered being over 52,000 feet.

The rigs will be built to deliver ERD as well as having the state-of-the-art capability of walking between wells eliminating the need for the rigs to be dismantled to be moved. These capabilities dramatically improve efficiency and safety while vastly reducing costs and emissions.