Ensco took delivery of the seventh and final rig in the Ensco 8500 Series on July 30 at the Keppel FELS shipyard in Singapore, where all the rigs in the series have been built.

The rig is contracted to Anadarko for work in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) starting in December.

The series has been notable for its reliability and high uptime. The Ensco 8500 Series rigs were the first to be recertified by regulators for work in the GoM following the Macondo incident, and achieved 97% utilization worldwide in 2011.

These rigs also have helped Ensco achieve the number one customer rating in deepwater drilling in the annual EnergyPoint survey for the past two years.