Diamond Offshore Drilling rig pipe sinks to sea bottom in ‘equipment incident’ (NYSE:DO)

Diamond Offshore Drilling (NYSE:DO) -2.1% in early trading Tuesday after saying equipment on a rig under lease to BP (BP) broke free during a storm and sank to the bottom off the U.K. coast.

The February 1 incident involved the Ocean GreatWhite ultra-deepwater harsh environment semi-submersible rig ~125 miles west of the Shetland Islands, Diamond Offshore (DO) said in an SEC filing.

The company said the rig was not carrying out any drilling activity at the time of the incident, no ,employees were injured, the rig maintained its structural integrity and the well is secure with the blowout preventer in place.

The failure of a blowout preventer contributed to the deadly disaster at the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Daimond Offshore (DO) is planning efforts to recover the equipment, but said it is too early to reliably estimate the financial impact of the incident.

BP (BP) said it is assessing whether the incident would affect the schedule of its drilling campaign; last November, it exercised options that likely would have kept the contract going until at least August 2024, and BP has five further priced options which, if all exercised, would have run into Q2 2025, according to UpstreamOnline.com.