Brazil, India Lead Users of Offshore Oil Rigs in July (Update1)

By Dinakar Sethuraman
Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil and India were the biggest users of offshore oil rigs in July as Petroleo Brasileiro SA drilled the Americas' biggest discovery in three decades and Reliance Industries Ltd. started developing a coastal field.
Brazil deployed 29 rigs, the most in 21 years, and India, the largest user of rigs in the Asia-Pacific, ordered 28, adding two since June, Baker Hughes Inc., the world's third- biggest oilfield-services provider, said on its Web site today. The countries accounted for 18 percent of equipment used to drill in waters internationally, excluding the U.S. and Canada.
Benchmark crude prices, which reached a record $147.27 a barrel in New York, have sparked increased exploration efforts from the Gulf of Mexico to the Indian Ocean. Oil companies including Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are hiring vessels to plumb the seafloor for untapped reserves.
The offshore rig count in Asia Pacific rose by 13 percent from a year earlier while in Latin America, the number increased 6.7 percent to 80, the Baker Hughes report showed. Asia Pacific and Latin America deployed 211 rigs last month, or about 68 percent of equipment used to drill in waters globally, excluding the U.S. and Canada.
Increased exploration spending has tripled rental rates and kept deep-water rigs operating near capacity for two years, according to information posted on the Web site of Transocean Inc., the world's largest offshore driller. The average fee for Transocean's most advanced deepwater rig jumped 35 percent from a year earlier to $390,400 a day.
Transocean's Rentals
Varun Shipping Co., an Indian carrier of oil and gas that counts BP Plc among its clients, may spend $300 million this year to buy three so-called deep-water anchor handlers to aid in offshore exploration, Yudhishthir Khatau, the company's managing director, said in an interview yesterday in Mumbai.
Rising equipment rentals have helped boost earnings at Houston-based Transocean. The company's profit for the three months ended June increased for the eighth quarter in a row. Transocean announced $6.45 billion in contract extensions and new leases during the April-to-June period for vessels hired by Mumbai-based Reliance Industries Ltd., BP and Petroleo Brasileiro.
The Brazilian explorer signed a $3.05 billion deal last month with Transocean to rent four of the company's rigs through 2016.
Reliance Industries plans to start production from a gas discovery on India's east coast. The field will produce the equivalent of 44 percent of India's current output when it starts this year.
The international rig count, excluding the U.S. and Canada, last month stood at 1,092, compared with 1,102 in June and 1,018 in July 2007, Baker Hughes said.
The drilling services provider has published the rotary rig counts since 1944, when Hughes Tool Co. began weekly counts of U.S. and Canadian drilling activity, the Web site said. The monthly international rig count started in 1975.