A drilling rig sank in the dark off Gabon on Saturday night, and the count on Sunday morning was this: 115 people had been on board, 110 were accounted for, and five were gone.
The rig was the Prospector 5, a jack-up owned by Borr Drilling, which also operates it. The work was on the Dussafu Marine licence, off the Gabon coast, where the rig had been jacking up to begin a drilling campaign for BW Energy. At about 8:37 p.m. local time on Oct. 24, in Borr’s telling, the rig lost stability. Then it sank.
Companies put out statements like this in careful language, and Borr’s is no exception. The cause it gives is preliminary. A punch-through, the statement says, during preload work — the kind of failure that takes a jack-up’s footing out from under it. Stability went after that, and the rig went under. What exactly happened on the rig in those minutes, neither Borr nor BW Energy says.
The search ran through Sunday. Borr’s onshore emergency response team is working with local authorities in Gabon and with BW Energy, and the company calls the search and rescue effort extensive. No list of names came with the statements — not for the five missing, and not for anyone else. Families still waiting for word have been given a number to call, +44 (0)1224 087026, staffed by Borr’s team.
“We are deeply concerned for those who remain unaccounted for and everyone affected by this incident. Our immediate priority is supporting the ongoing search and rescue efforts and the welfare of all personnel involved.”
BW Energy’s statement covers the field around the sinking. Production at the MaBoMo facility is shut down. That is standard procedure while drilling preparations are under way, the company says, and it reports no damage to the facility or to its equipment. Nothing harmful, it adds, has discharged into the sea from the facility.
Both disclosures landed on Sunday morning as regulatory filings, the kind Oslo-listed companies are required to make. Borr trades in New York as well. The Prospector 5 itself dates to 2014 — a modern jack-up, built to work in water as deep as 400 feet, according to Offshore Energy — and it was on contract to BW Energy for the Dussafu campaign, part of the company’s push to lift its output from about 30,000 barrels a day in 2025 to more than 100,000 by 2028. For now, that campaign is stopped, and the only work running off Gabon is the search.
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