All's not well at Transocean

IMAGE isn’t everything, but courting bad publicity makes no financial sense in these jittery times. This lesson, however, appeared lost on Switzerland-based Transocean last month. The world’s largest offshore contract driller managed to offend just about everybody with its statement in an April regulatory filing that its most senior managers were given two-thirds of their total possible safety bonus, worth around a combined $0.9m, for achieving the “best year in safety performance in our company’s history”. The awards came despite two fatal accidents on board Transocean-operated rigs last year: as well as the 11 men who died in the explosion on board the Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible last year, which resulted in the worst offshore oil spill in US history at the Gulf Macondo field (PE 12/10 p40); a contractor is missing, presumed drowned, after an accident on board the Jack Ryan drillship during operations at the Akpo field offshore Nigeria....