Offshore drilling contractor Vantage Drilling International has received a two-year contract from India’s Oil and Natural Gas Company (ONGC) for its ultra-deepwater drillship, Platinum Explorer.

The new contract is planned to commence upon completion of the drillship’s existing three-year contract with ONGC, scheduled in the second quarter of this year.

Vantage expects to yield revenue of around $109m, excluding service tax, from the new contract.

Vantage Drilling International CEO Ihab Toma said: “We are very pleased to receive this award from ONGC. We have been working successfully with the Platinum Explorer for ONGC since the rig was built in 2010 and have built a first-class operation in India with them.”

In 2017, ONGC awarded a three-year contract to Vantage Drilling to mobilise the Platinum Explorer deepwater drillship.

In the subsequent year, ONGC said it commenced the $5.07bn KG-DWN-98/2 project in the Krishna Godavari basin off the east coast of India by spudding the first of the planned 34 subsea wells.

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The well was drilled using the Platinum Explorer ultra-deepwater drillship.

The 34 wells planned to be drilled under the KG-DWN-98/2 project include 15 oil producing wells, eight gas producing wells and 11 water injecting wells.

In addition, the KG DWN 98/2 project will see 425km of pipeline and 150km of control umbilical laid out in water depths of 300m to 1400m.