Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) And your first question comes from the line of Angie Sedita from Macquarie Securities. Please proceed.
Angie Sedita - Macquarie Securities
Great, thank you. Thanks guys. I guess just one. The first question is a clarification question on the cost in the international offshore. And I thought you said that they're capitalized costs, so is it fair to assume that Q1 will be more similar to Q3 on the cost side?
Lisa Rodriguez
It will be. Q3 was abnormally high due to some repairs and maintenance, but Q1 has 261 and 262 going to work. So it does approximate the Q3 number.
Angie Sedita - Macquarie Securities
Okay. Okay, great. And then John, could you -- obviously you commented on what you're seeing in the Gulf of Mexico as well as international. Can you just give us a little bit more cover as far as -- color as to what you're seeing on the international side as beyond Pemex where are you seeing demand? What are you hearing out of the Middle East, the Saudis? Is the thought process that they're just deferring everything into the back half of '09, is it 2010? And simply there is no or very limited work to be had in the first half or is there some job that you do see outside of Pemex?
John Rynd
Good morning, Angie. I think that right now the way we view it, I think Pemex potentially, as we addressed in the prepared comments, can either in the market for six incremental rigs. What do we read into this delay? That is they have their right to delay the award by 20 days. They've done it previously. So don't read too much in it. They had very aggressive plans coming into this year. We'll just have to watch and see how that develops.
It's hard to get a firm grasp this early in the year on the other international markets. We were out and about as a management team across the world dealing with customers big, small, the national, mega majors. And I think that the uncertainty of where commodity prices are going to fall throughout 2009, the budget process internally is not nailed down yet, as this thing has been a moving target.
We're not going to go to zero, but I think we've seen early signs of some early terminations or not really early terminations, but not renewals of some rigs coming up for the option period in the Middle East. So you could see a retrenchment in activity there. West Africa has been somewhat of a head-scratcher over the last three years actually. Again, a lot of that's driven by capital going to the deepwater and also just internally dealing with the national oil companies.
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