Maersk Drilling adapts to changing market environment

Maersk Drilling announced what it is doing in light of the current commercial outlook that has seen the COVID-19 pandemic and lower oil price impact offshore drilling activity.

The Danish drilling company explained that the current energy landscape has led to tenders and projects being delayed or cancelled which adversely affects commercial prospects.

Maersk Drilling said it intends to stack a number of the company’s North Sea rigs. As a consequence, it is proposing to reduce the offshore crew pool and has now taken steps to initiate consultations with trade unions and employee representatives about redundancies in the company’s offshore crew pool in Denmark, Norway and the UK.

Maersk Drilling expects that the consultations will lead to a total of 250-300 redundancies in the North Sea crew pool.

“Though it’s standard practice in our industry to adjust our workforce to activity levels, it never feels right to say goodbye to good colleagues, especially when so many have walked the extra mile to keep operations running in these very difficult circumstances. However, it’s our responsibility to safeguard our business and we are now taking steps to maintain competitiveness in the challenging market environment,” said CEO Jørn Madsen.