Woodside Petroleum has secured deep-water drilling rigs in Australia to support its field development projects in the coming two years.

The two latest contracts will see Woodside use the Diamond Offshore semi-submersible Ocean Apex from early January 2021 until mid November 2021, and the Valaris semisub DPS-1 from July 2020 to September 2021. Woodside has just finished one contract with Valaris for the DPS-1 and has already booked the Ocean Apex from early January 2020 until late September next year.

It is understood the rigs will be used predominantly to drill production wells at Woodside's offshore field developments.

The operator has not revealed plans to drill exploration wells in Australia.

Woodside's field development projects include the Pyxis Hub, Greater Western Flank phase three, Scarborough and Browse.

Meanwhile, the two drilling companies expressed their optimism about the Australian market in their quarterly results conference calls.

Valaris chief executive Tom Burke said the DPS-1 contract with Woodside was a highlight of the previous quarter, though a dayrate was not disclosed.

"The Australian market continues to be an important region for semi-submersibles and we expect several opportunities to emerge for semis in this region in 2020," said Burke.

Diamond Offshore shed light on dayrate improvement in Australia when it confirmed the Ocean Apex deal with Woodside.

"We don't disclose dayrates, but the dayrate that we've just been awarded in Australia for the Apex, following an upgrade on that rig, is higher than all clean dayrates that have been announced this year for drillships on a rig that has a lower operating cost," said chief executive Marc Edwards.

"This rate exceeds recent dayrate fixtures that we have seen for sixth and seventh-generation drillships.

"This new contract is also the fourth consecutive fixture that has seen an increase in dayrate for this rig," Edwards added. Diamond indicated it is seeing a general pattern in Australia whereby each successive contract was priced better than the one before.

"I think there's a shared expectation between both the offshore drillers, as well as the operators," said chief commercial officer Ronald Woll.

"Over time, those rates, I think do kind of click forward at a higher level. I wouldn't describe it as dramatic but it is, I think, a fairly consistent trend over time."

Diamond will mobilise to Australia in the coming months the upgraded semisub Ocean Onyx for a one-year fixed campaign with Beach Energy.

Another US drilling company with a presence in Australia, Noble Corporation, said it is currently "evaluating several opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region including Australia" for its semisub Noble Clyde Boudreaux, which is expected to wrap up a campaign offshore Myanmar in May 2020.

Transocean, the world's largest driller, said in its latest quarterly report that Australia is the "strongest market" in the Asia-Pacific region.

"Awards continue to support dayrates solidly in the mid-to-high $200,000 per day range and we expect fixtures later in 2020 ready to push closer to the $300,000 per day mark as supply tightens," said chief executive Jeremy Thigpen.

Transcocean is sending the drillship Dhirubhai Deepwater KG2 into Australia soon to start a contract with Chevron.

Chevron also has Transcocean's semisub Development Driller I on long-term hire.

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Woodside rigged up in improved Oz market