>Plus exxon would be the world leader for such a task

Unfortunately it isn't actual Exxon personel that are doing the drilling, its a Czech drilling crew who don't speak English. Going back to that job ad I posted the other day:

"This business is developing a large resource within an Eastern European location, drilling HPHT wells at depths of up to 5,000 metres from 2 Czech-supplied land-rigs. They have identified a requirement to enhance performance and safety in order to deliver more efficient results"

That strongly suggests that the results they have so far were not as efficient as they could be. MND (the drilling contractor) has probably been doing thing their way, instead of the Exxon way. Keep in mind that the operator is Exxon, the contractor is MND:

"In this role you will act as a central rig-site point of contact, conveying the operator's drilling processes and HSE procedures to the contractor's personnel"

And I don't think the ad was place to replace someone that left:

"This will be achieved through the immediate introduction of a Drilling Coordinator who will be responsible for facilitating communication and interaction between a western-based global energy company and the Czech contractors manning the rig."

Going by that paragraph, it seems that they didn't have a 'Drilling Coordinator' in the first place, and have suddenly decided that they need one in a hurry.

So what I'm saying is that it's great to have Exxon as the operator, Exxon themselves are not doing the actual work. All the ground work is done by contractors. I don't think anyone will argue that Falcon hired all the best contractors money could buy, therefore I don't think that technically things have changed all that much. The drilling is now being done using Exxon's drilling processes, whereas Falcon was using APA, who have a lot of HPHT drilling experience in the GOM. The biggest advantage to having Exxon onboard is that they are now paying for those contractors to try again, using lessons learned from the past.