Borr Drilling rig sinks off Gabon, one dead, four missing

A jack-up drilling rig owned by Borr Drilling Limited sank late Saturday off the coast of Gabon, killing at least one crew member and leaving four others missing after what the company said was a sudden loss of stability during routine jacking operations. The rig, the Prospector 5, was preparing for a drilling campaign for customer BW Energy when it went down in the Dussafu Marin licence area, according to a statement Borr Drilling issued early Sunday.

A punch-through at sea

Borr Drilling said the incident occurred at about 8:37 p.m. local time on October 24 as the Prospector 5 was conducting jacking operations, the process by which a jack-up rig lowers its legs to the seabed and raises its hull above the water. Preliminary information, the company said, points to a "punch-through event during preload activities" — a failure in which a rig's legs suddenly break through a weaker layer of seabed sediment into softer ground below, destabilizing the structure. The rig had not yet begun drilling.

Of the 115 people aboard, 110 were safely accounted for in the hours after the sinking. Borr said five remained unaccounted for as search and rescue efforts continued, a figure repeated in a parallel regulatory disclosure filed under Norwegian securities law. By Sunday, Reuters reported that one of the five, an Indian national, had been found dead, while three Gabonese nationals and one other expatriate crew member remained missing.

Search continues off Mayumba

The rig went down near Mayumba, in southern Gabon, close to the MaBoMo production platform that forms part of the Dussafu Marin development. BW Energy, which holds a 73.5 percent working interest in the licence, confirmed in its own announcement to shareholders that production at MaBoMo had been shut down as a standard precaution and that no damage to the platform or accidental discharge to the sea had been identified. Panoro Energy, which owns the remaining 17.5 percent of the licence alongside Gabon's state oil company, issued a similar statement.

Gabon's Ministry of Petroleum and Gas said it had activated a crisis unit bringing together the ministry, the navy, Gabon Oil Company, BW Energy and Borr Drilling, and ordered naval vessels to reinforce the search at sea, according to Reuters reporting carried by South Africa's Sowetan. The ministry also opened a technical investigation into the cause of the sinking. Officials said pollution-response equipment had been positioned to protect the coastline, including the nearby Mayumba National Park, a protected stretch of beach and lagoon that hosts one of the world's largest leatherback turtle nesting grounds, though no spill had been reported as of Sunday.

"We are deeply concerned for those who remain unaccounted for," said Borr Drilling chief executive Bruno Morand, adding that the company's immediate priority was the safety and welfare of everyone affected and support for the ongoing search.

A second setback in a difficult year

The Prospector 5 is a 2014-built jack-up rig of Friede & Goldman JU-2000E design, capable of drilling in water depths up to 400 feet, according to specifications reported by the trade publication Offshore Energy. It had been under contract to BW Energy since the spring, when Borr announced a binding award covering a four-well program expected to run well into 2027. The rig's loss removes one unit from Borr's fleet of jack-ups, which operate across West Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Mexico and the North Sea.

The sinking is the second operational disruption for Borr Drilling this year. In March, the company halted operations on several jack-ups in the Arabian Gulf, including the Arabia III, after a separate incident on a customer platform forced a shutdown and evacuation; no injuries were reported in that case. Borr, which is incorporated in Bermuda and dual-listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Oslo Børs under the ticker BORR, has been working to rebuild profitability after a stretch of soft jackup day rates and delayed tendering tied in part to instability in Middle East oil markets. The company posted a second-quarter loss in August and is scheduled to report third-quarter results on November 18.

Because the rig sank on a Saturday evening, there was no immediate market reaction; both the New York Stock Exchange and Oslo Børs were closed for the weekend. Borr Drilling shares, which had been trading in the $4-to-$5 range for most of October, were not due to resume trading until markets reopened Monday, as were shares of BW Energy and Panoro Energy, both listed in Oslo.

What happens next

Search and rescue operations remained active off Mayumba into Sunday, with Gabonese naval assets and personnel from Borr, BW Energy and the ministry's crisis unit continuing to look for the four missing crew members. Borr Drilling set up a dedicated line for family members seeking information and said it would provide updates as the search progressed and as more facts about the cause became available.

The technical investigation opened by Gabon's oil ministry is expected to examine why the rig's preload process failed to detect the punch-through risk before the Prospector 5 began jacking up, a routine step in most jack-up deployments that is typically preceded by soil surveys intended to flag exactly this kind of hazard. Any findings are likely to be closely watched by both the offshore drilling industry and Borr's lenders and insurers, given the rig's apparent total loss and the ongoing human toll. Neither Borr Drilling nor BW Energy has said when, or with what rig, the paused drilling campaign at Dussafu might resume.