Shares of Aban Offshore ended lower by over 18% to end at Rs831.
Shares of Aban Offshore nose dived after the company lost one of its biggest money-spinning rigs, earning Rs15mn a day, offshore Venezuela. Aban Pearl, a semi-submersible ship owned by one of the subsidiaries of Aban offshore, sank in the early hours of May 13, the company said in a statement to the stock exchanges. The company said it was assessing the causes of the incident.
Investigations started in Venezuela into the sinking of a natural-gas platform leased by a unit to state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA. PDVSA said that a failure in Aban Pearl’s floatation system caused the rig to sink after a massive inflow of water. Aban Offshore, based in Chennai, is assisting in finding the causes of the incident, the company said.
"We’re going to open an investigation into the causes behind this with the owners of the platform because this was an incident that happened very quickly," Oil Minister and PDVSA President Rafael Ramirez said. "The most important thing is that with the violence of the incident all of our workers are safe."
Technicians avoided a leak by sealing the gas well with a security valve before the platform sank, PDVSA said in a statement. The rig’s 95 workers were safely evacuated, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said earlier yesterday in a message posted on his Twitter account.
Shares of Aban Offshore ended lower by over 18% to end at Rs831. The scrip opened at Rs912 it touched an intra-day high of Rs980 and a low of Rs812 and has recorded volumes of over 3.9mn shares on BSE.
Source: http://www.indiainfoline.com