Pacific Drilling and Athens Group declared a three year partnership to reduce non-productive time (NPT) from the design phase through to operations for all software-dependent control systems for Pacific Drilling's best-in-class drillships. The partnership is focused on quality, risk mitigation and problem remediation, and change management processes for the Pacific Bora, Pacific Scirocco, Pacific Mistral and Pacific Santa Ana drillships, scheduled for delivery in 2010 and 2011.

Chris Beckett, CEO of Pacific Drilling, announced, "We believe that quality equipment and business processes will provide significant benefit to our customers by improving the overall performance of our rigs and consistency of service delivery. Our strategy is to partner with the leading providers with proven results to help us reduce the costs associated with non-productive time and to safeguard our workers and the environment. When it comes to providing software expertise and proven technology assurance services in the highly-specialized area of rig control systems, Athens Group is by far the most experienced vendor, and like us, very customer-oriented."

"Leveraging our Proven PracticeSM Methodologies, software expertise and hundreds of lessons learned on high-specification offshore rigs around the world enables us to provide maximum return on investment to Pacific Drilling," said Mike Haney, CEO of Athens Group. "We are especially excited to be partnering with their highly-experienced team and collaborating with their shipyard and equipment vendors to achieve on-time delivery of the safest, most reliable and well-integrated control system possible."

Tags: Pacific Drilling Ltd.