Integration

What allows COSL to expect a relatively smooth transition is the "support on the policy level" from the former Awilco executive team.

The executives, from both Norway and the United States, were recently invited to tour COSL headquarters in Beijing, and held talks with the Chinese executives. With their support, COSL is now expecting a relatively flat and efficient future management structure.

According to the integration plan, Awilco's Oslo headquarters will be dissolved, because its oil operations, which COSL will inherit, are entirely based in Stavanger, the Norwegian oil service center for the North Sea. So all COSL's Norwegian business will be based in Stavanger.

While the task to oversee Premium Drilling (PD), a Houston-based drilling operator jointly owned by Awilco and India's Aban Offshore Ltd, will be shifted from Oslo to the COSL head office in Beijing. COSL will inherit Awilco's equity rights in PD.

But the integration plan is not just about regrouping operations and reshuffling people. One of the problems that the company has also inherited is the delay in the delivery of the semi-submersible rigs, still under construction in Yantai in east China, by a Singaporean ship builder.

"We fully understand what we must do," Yuan says. "The problem is no longer just between Oslo and Yantai. Beijing has stepped in." The geographic distance between Beijing and Yantai is much shorter, and some COSL delegates have already held talks with the ship builder.

The CEO says: "Very soon, we will draw up a comprehensive plan to give our inputs, to guarantee no more delays, if not to shorten the delay."

(China Daily November 24, 2008)