Transocean’s largest investor at the end of 2009, Denver-based Marsico Capital Management, liquidated its entire holding in the world’s biggest oil driller partly because of a fatal rig blast that triggered a Gulf of Mexico spill. Marsico began selling some of its 20.96 million shares this year as a glut of North American natural gas diminished demand for rigs built to extract the fuel from shallow coastal waters, chief executive Tom Marsico told Bloomberg Television.
He also cited concerns that Brazilian government delays in opening offshore prospects to explorers would pressure rates paid to rent rigs. Marsico said he “accelerated” sales of Transocean stock after the Deepwater Horizon rig was rocked by an April 20 explosion and fire that killed 11 workers, sank the vessel and triggered leaks in a subsea well that’s spewing an estimated 5,000 barrels a day of crude into the sea off the Louisiana coast.
Marsico, whose 6.25 percent stake in Transocean was worth $1.74 billion at the end of 2009, said lease rates paid by oil companies to drill wells thousands of feet beneath the sea surface may plunge to $350,000 a day from about $500,000 now if U.S. regulators impose a moratorium on new drilling in response to the disaster. Bloomberg News
