Diamond Offshore, GE Oil & Gas Enter Subsea Blowout Preventer Service Agreement

(RTTNews) - Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc. (DO) and GE Oil & Gas (GE) announced a contractual service agreement that transfers full accountability for BOP performance to GE Oil & Gas. Under the arrangement, GE Oil & Gas will provide engageDrilling Services for Blowout-preventer (BOP) systems on Diamond Offshore's four 6th-Generation drillships, including management of maintenance, certification and reliability.

Under the new service model, Diamond Offshore will begin capturing data through GE's monitoring and analytics solutions. By transferring the maintenance and service of well control equipment to GE Oil & Gas, Diamond Offshore is simplifying operations and optimizing between well maintenance to reduce the frequency and duration of downtime.

The 10-year collaborative arrangement also include GE purchasing the BOP systems aboard Diamond Offshore's four drillships, currently located in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, for a total of $210 million.

Separately, Diamond Offshore announced that its Board has discontinued the quarterly cash dividend of $0.125 per share, which will preserve an additional $69 million on an annual basis.