Diamond Offshore Brand Guidelines: Diamond M, ODECO’s Ocean Rigs & a 2024 Noble Merger

A Texas ranch name and a New Orleans rig builder.

Diamond Offshore grew from two older companies. The first, according to English Wikipedia, began in 1964, when Don McMahon acquired the onshore driller Brewster-Bartle from its bank creditors and formed the Diamond M Drilling Company, named after Diamond M Acres, his ranch near Simonton, Texas. Diamond M then expanded into offshore drilling and became a public company through a share offering in 1970. It was owned for twelve years by Kaneb Services before the Loews Corporation bought it in 1989, the encyclopedia says.

The second company was older. ODECO, the Ocean Drilling & Exploration Company, was founded in 1953 by Alden J. “Doc” Laborde, who also founded Tidewater, and John Hayward, the builder of the Barnsdall rig and holder of a patent on submersible drilling barges, English Wikipedia says. Charles Murphy Jr. of Murphy Oil invested in the venture and helped Laborde find other backers. ODECO’s first rig, built by Alexander Shipyard in New Orleans, was delivered in 1954, went straight to work for Shell Oil and was named Mr. Charlie, after Murphy; it was retired in 1986.

In 1963 ODECO took delivery of the Ocean Driller, which English Wikipedia describes as the first purpose-built V-shaped semisubmersible drilling rig, designed and built by Laborde after he noticed how stable submersible rigs were when only partly submerged for moves. Murphy Oil acquired ODECO in 1991.

The two lines met in 1992, when Diamond M Corporation bought ODECO from Murphy Oil. The combined business was briefly called Diamond M-ODECO Drilling before it took the name Diamond Offshore Drilling, Inc. in 1993.

A New York listing and a floating fleet.

Diamond Offshore became a public company again in October 1995, with a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, and in April 1996 it acquired Arethusa, English Wikipedia says. In May 2012 it ordered a drillship from Hyundai Heavy Industries, and in September 2016 it was removed from the S&P 500 index.

One of its rigs came from South Korea. In July 2016 gCaptain reported that Hyundai Heavy Industries had delivered the Ocean GreatWhite to Diamond Offshore, then described as a Houston-based drilling contractor. Its builder described the rig, 123 metres long and 78 metres wide, as the largest semisubmersible drilling rig in the world. It is a harsh-environment semisubmersible of the Moss CS60E design, rated for water up to 10,000 feet deep, and the order followed a three-year contract with BP for work off the southern coast of Australia. By then, the same report said, the shipbuilder had also delivered four ultra-deepwater drillships to Diamond Offshore.

Like ODECO’s Ocean Driller, Diamond’s later rigs carried the word “Ocean” in their names. In August 2024 Offshore Energy reported on the Ocean BlackRhino drillship and the Ocean GreatWhite in its coverage of the company’s fleet. English Wikipedia lists Diamond Offshore with 15 rigs, 11 semisubmersibles and four drillships, a headquarters in Katy, Texas, and major offices in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Scotland, Singapore and Norway.

The company then went through restructuring. Diamond Offshore began voluntary Chapter 11 proceedings in April 2020, Offshore Energy reported, and emerged on 23 April 2021 after completing a financial reorganisation under a joint plan of reorganisation. Under the plan its senior unsecured notes were converted into equity and a newly constituted board of directors was appointed. The company had earlier aimed to leave Chapter 11 in late January 2021, the same report noted; on emergence its chairman, president and chief executive retired, and the chief operating officer became interim chief executive. English Wikipedia links the filing in part to the oil price collapse of 2020.

How offshore drillers present themselves.

Offshore drilling contractors sell time on rigs rather than goods in a shop, so their public identity is built around the fleet. Their websites tend to pair plain corporate wordmarks, often in navy, red or orange, with large photographs of drillships, semisubmersibles and jack-ups at sea, published by the companies themselves.

The rig is the working unit of the brand. Contractors commonly give each rig its own page with a short run of specifications: the design, the water depth it is rated for, how deep it can drill, how many people it can house, and where and for whom it is working. Shelf Drilling’s fleet page, for example, gives every one of its jack-ups the same set of fields. Rig names often share a prefix or a word, so that the company name travels with each unit from contract to contract.

Fleet-status reports are the other recurring document, listing rigs with their current customers, locations and contract periods for investors and clients. When Noble Corporation completed its acquisition of Diamond Offshore in September 2024, it published an updated fleet status report alongside the announcement, The Maritime Executive reported. Operating-region maps sit next to them, placing rigs in waters from the North Sea to West Africa and Southeast Asia.

Investor pages complete the picture, because the sector has been reshaped by restructurings and mergers. Diamond Offshore went through Chapter 11 in 2020 and 2021 and became part of Noble in 2024; Shelf Drilling became part of ADES in 2025. For designers, these companies show a corporate identity carried by rig names, specification sheets, fleet reports and maps rather than by packaging or retail.

Absorbed into Noble in 2024.

Diamond Offshore’s independent life ended in 2024. In June 2024 Noble Corporation announced an agreement to acquire it in a cash-and-stock deal, and the transaction closed on 4 September 2024, several months ahead of the expected timeline, The Maritime Executive reported. Noble, which traces its own contract drilling back to 1921 through its predecessors, had already merged with Maersk Drilling in 2022, the same report noted.

The Diamond fleet became part of Noble’s. gCaptain reported in September 2024 that the combined fleet then numbered 41 rigs, 28 floaters and 13 jack-ups, and that Noble described it as the largest fleet of seventh-generation dual-BOP drillships in the industry. Noble also published an updated fleet status report after the deal closed, and a director from Diamond’s board joined Noble’s board.

Diamond Offshore no longer trades as a separate company. It is part of Noble, and the former diamondoffshore.com address now forwards visitors to Noble’s website. What remains of the name is its history: a ranch in Texas, ODECO’s Mr. Charlie and Ocean Driller, and a fleet whose rig names began with “Ocean.”

For a design guide, Diamond Offshore shows one name carrying two lineages, a Texas ranch brand and ODECO’s line of “Ocean” rigs, until a larger fleet absorbed both. Compare Noble Corporation, which absorbed it in 2024, and Maersk Drilling, which merged into Noble in 2022. For this guide we use an ocean navy, cut-stone grey and a ranch red with a sturdy serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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