PROPERTY, PLANT AND EQUIPMENT

3 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2020

Property, Plant and Equipment [Abstract]

PROPERTY, PLANT AND EQUIPMENT

NOTE 4 PROPERTY, PLANT AND EQUIPMENT 

Property, plant and equipment as of December 31, 2020 and September 30, 2020 consisted of the following:

(in thousands)	Estimated Useful Lives	December 31, 2020		September 30, 2020
Drilling services equipment	4 - 15 years	$	7,255,178	$	7,313,234
Tubulars	4 years	612,431		615,281
Real estate properties	10 - 45 years	43,365		43,389
Other	2 - 23 years	465,205		464,704
Construction in progress (1)		53,630		49,592
		8,429,809		8,486,200
Accumulated depreciation		(4,877,702)		(4,839,859)
Property, plant and equipment, net		$	3,552,107	$	3,646,341

(1)Included in construction in progress are costs for projects in progress to upgrade or refurbish certain rigs in our existing fleet.  Additionally, we include other capital maintenance purchase-orders that are open/in process.  As these various projects are completed, the costs are then classified to their appropriate useful life category.

Depreciation

Depreciation expense in the Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations was $105.1 million and $128.2 million, including $0.3 million and $0.8 million in abandonments, for the three months ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively.

Gain on Sale of Assets

We had a gain on sale of assets of $12.3 million and $4.3 million for the three months ended December 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. During the three months ended December 31, 2020, we closed on the sale of an offshore platform rig within our Offshore Gulf of Mexico operating segment for total consideration of $12.0 million with an aggregate net book value of $2.8 million, resulting in a gain of $9.2 million, which is included within Gain on Sale of Assets on our Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations. We also had gains on asset sales related to customer reimbursement for the replacement value of drill pipe damaged or lost in drilling operations.

Decommissioning

    During the fiscal year ended September 30, 2020, we decommissioned two rigs and 35 rigs from our legacy Domestic Conventional asset group and FlexRig3® asset group, respectively. The decommissioned rigs were impaired as of March 31, 2020. We did not decommission any rigs during the three months ended December 31, 2020.