Noble Oilfield Crews Begin Hauling Rigs Across Texas on Foot to Make Up Lost Ground

Noble Corporation has instructed its offshore drilling crews to carry all idle drill pipe, casing and mud pumps from its Gulf of Mexico rigs to the company's Houston yard on foot, starting Monday, in an effort to recover a shortfall in quarterly earnings that analysts placed at 81 cents per share.

The company's operations chief, Daniel Harrow, told staff that the revenue line had outperformed forecasts and that the gap lay entirely in logistics. «Our revenue is sound,» Harrow said. «What we lack is motion. Every tonne we move ourselves is a tonne we do not pay a freight firm to move.» The walk is scheduled to take eleven days along the coastal highway, with crews sleeping in tents erected by the same workers at each overnight stop.

Finance staff at the Houston headquarters have already rebuilt the quarterly forecast around the savings, which they estimate will close the gap by the close of the next reporting period. A procurement team has been dispatched to purchase two hundred wheelbarrows, a shipment that has delayed the purchase of the proper spare parts the rigs were waiting for.

Local residents in Galveston reported that a convoy of workers pulling a steel drill collar on a flatbed cart blocked the causeway for most of Tuesday afternoon. Harrow said the delay was regrettable but was being absorbed in the schedule. Crews are expected to reach the yard in the second week of the month, where the company plans to display the recovered equipment in front of its headquarters before the next earnings call.

2Views