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Wow, acquiring a semi-submersible drilling rig (in use for 12 years it seems, came into service 2008) for $3.5 million? It cost $312 dollars to build. I get there are a lot of environmental concerns with these kinds of things but this just seems like a steal.

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The market for off-shore oil drilling has collapsed, as it can't currently compete with on-shore (e.g., shale). So most of them are now only worth their scrap value, which isn't trivial but from which you also need to subtract scrapping cost. It's not surprising to me that a $300M piece of machinery has <$10M of metal scrap value, and you loose half in the scrapping process. Your $30,000 dollar car is only worth about $200 as scrap.

Apparently it was sold as part of a liquidation, that's why it was so cheap.

If it had more value to someone else, they would have bid for it.

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