Selected offshore drilling companies by revenue 2018-2021

Transocean Ltd is the largest offshore drilling contractor in the world. In 2021, the Switzerland-based company reported 2.56 billion U.S. dollars in revenues. Though this figure represents a significant decreaese compared to the previous year, it was still was over one billion more U.S. dollars than the amount generated by its nearest competitor – Valaris plc. Transocean is contractor to some of the largest oil producers worldwide – such as Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron. It was also owner of Deepwater Horizon, which had been leased to BP and was involved in the largest marine oil spill caused by the petroleum industry.

Global rig fleet and the decommissioning market

Offshore rigs are facilities built to explore, extract, process, and store petroleum and natural gas from subsea formations. Some of the risks associated with such platforms are explosions, fires, ecological disasters, and endangerment of native marine species. As many stationary rigs will reach the end of their lifecycle and resources of previously productive oilfields are depleted, the market value of offshore decommissioning worldwide is expected to increase to 8.3 billion U.S. dollars by 2024. By comparison, the use of mobile rigs has become more common in recent years as they allow for more flexible usage. Valaris has the largest mobile offshore rig fleet of any company.

At the end of 2020, the number of global offshore oil rigs stood at 173 units, compared with 843 units of land-based oil rigs.