Good morning. My name is Phyllis, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Noble Corporation conference call. At this time, I would like to hand the conference over to Craig Muirhead, Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasurer. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and welcome everyone to Noble Corporation's conference call to discuss our merger transaction with Pacific Drilling. Joining me today are Robert Eifler, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Richard Barker, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. For today's call, we will not be hosting a question-and-answer session at the end of the prepared remarks. Noble and Pacific Drilling issued a joint press release this morning, which is available on Noble's website. Please also refer to the slide presentation regarding this transaction, which is also available on the Investor Relations page of our website at noblecorp.com. During the course of this call, we may make certain forward-looking statements regarding various matters related to our business and companies that are not historical facts. Such statements are based upon current expectations and assumptions of management and are therefore subject to certain risks and uncertainties.
Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements, and Noble does not assume any obligation to update those statements. Please refer to our SEC filings for more information regarding our forward-looking statements, including the risks and uncertainties that could impact our future results. And now, I will turn the call over to Robert Eifler, President and Chief Executive Officer of Noble.
Thanks, Craig. Following this morning's press release, we are excited to announce today that Noble and Pacific Drilling have agreed to combine in an all-stock transaction. The strategic rationale for this transaction is compelling and brings several important benefits to the shareholders and stakeholders of both companies. First, it brings a high-quality fleet of drill ships under Noble's banner. Noble has differentiated itself through the full utilization of our drill ship fleet. For the first time in several years, we will now have rigs to bid into the various opportunities we see upcoming, including prospects with our existing customers as well as the excellent customer base that Pacific brings with it. Additionally, the transaction brings a talented group of people who share Noble's commitment to safety and operational excellence.
While Pacific doesn't share the lengthy history of Noble, the organization has been defined by operational excellence since its inception, and I have every confidence that their cultural values match closely with Noble's. It is financially compelling, with Pacific bringing a net cash position at closing. And lastly, the combination will create a more efficient operational structure at a time when operating efficiently is a crucial factor to success in our industry. Now, let me go into a bit more detail on each of these subjects. As Craig mentioned, we have posted a slide presentation on our website, and I will reference it occasionally during my comments for anyone wishing to follow along. On Slide 2 , under the terms of the merger agreement that was unanimously approved by the boards of both companies, Pacific Drilling equity holders will receive 16.6 million newly issued shares of Noble.
Pro forma for the transaction, Noble shareholders will own 75.1% of the combined company, and Pacific Drilling will own 24.9%. The Noble board of directors and senior executive team will remain in place. Pacific Drilling has received approval from the majority of its shareholders, and we do not expect to need antitrust clearance. No shareholder vote is required for Noble to complete the transaction, and we are targeting closing in April, subject to customary closing conditions. Slide 4 gives some highlights on the high-spec, ultra-deepwater drillships we will add to the Noble fleet. The Pacific Khamsin, Pacific Sharav, and Pacific Meltem are seventh-generation drillships equipped with two BOPs, dual activity, and 2.5 million-pound hook loads. The Khamsin is also fitted with an integrated MPD system provided by the same manufacturer as the system in place on the Noble Globetrotter II.
The Pacific Santa Ana and the Pacific Scirocco are sixth-generation drill ships, both with dual activity and dual BOP capable. The Sharav is contracted with Murphy in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico starting in Q2 of this year, and the Khamsin is under contract with Petronas in Mexico beginning in Q3. The Santa Ana is currently under contract with Petronas in Mauritania into the second half of 2021. Pacific's historical customer base demonstrates partnerships with operators that set high standards for operational excellence, further illustrating the quality of the culture and assets of the company. We plan to move expeditiously to dispose of the Pacific Bora and Pacific Mistral, which are currently stacked and will be classified as held for sale after the acquisition.
Disposing of the Bora and the Mistral will eliminate the associated stacking costs, which we estimated approximately $10 million on an annual run rate basis, and is consistent with our decision to dispose of five cold-stack Noble rigs late last year and our commitment to capital discipline. We will continue to take a hard look at idle assets going forward. In addition, we expect to integrate the Pacific Drilling assets into the Noble platform with minimal incremental overhead and anticipate realizing run rate cost synergies of over $30 million per year by the end of 2021. The Pacific rigs use the same OEMs that we use in the Noble fleet for several major components like engines, thrusters, well control equipment, and drilling equipment. This will allow us to consolidate fleet spares and further improve the efficiency of our capital spending and inventory management going forward.
Any savings related to capital spares and inventory management would be incremental to the $30 million of cost synergies. Turning now to Slide 6 and a few brief words on our market outlook, we are confident in the timing of the acquisition. After several years of reduced spending on offshore CapEx, our belief, corroborated by the third-party research shown, is that 2021 will be a trough year in both floater and jackup demand. Brent spot pricing has recovered significantly from its pandemic low to over $60 per barrel today. While our customers don't react immediately to moves in spot market pricing, we believe that the rollout of vaccines and the return of the economy to normal functioning will lead to increasing offshore E&P spending over the next several years.
Further, we believe that the burgeoning noise around the continuous underinvestment and reserve replacement will grow in volume as the world returns to a normalized state. With all that said, tendering activity over the next six to nine months is crucial to determining the trajectory of a recovery, particularly in the UDW space. We expect that any increase in demand would particularly benefit newer and technologically advanced rigs like we offer in the Noble fleet, and ensuring that the three currently contracted Pacific rigs find additional work is a top priority. We already enjoy high utilization in our fleet today, and our high-spec rigs are well positioned to benefit from any demand improvement. Turning to Page 9, the combined fleet will consist of 12 floating rigs and 12 jackups and will include seven of the top 40 Tier-1 drill ships in the world.
Our jackup fleet is high-spec and has strong contract coverage. The Noble Lloyd Noble, which is one of the most capable jackups in the world, has mobilized to Norway and is preparing for its maiden contract in country. We expect that rig to be competitive in Norway for many years. Turning to the map on Slide 10, the addition of the Pacific Drilling rigs facilitates our re-entry into regions we have known well in the past, like West Africa and Mexico, and further strengthens our presence in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Our footprint is compelling. We have the right assets in the right regions, including exposure to some of the most exciting offshore basins globally. Slide 11 shows our backlog position pro forma for the Pacific Drilling acquisition. We have approximately $1.7 billion of revenue backlog and an enviable ratio of contracted backlog to total debt.
Pacific's history includes relationships with several large customers who have meaningful activity in deepwater regions. As demonstrated on Slide 12, our strong customer relationships and high-spec fleet have allowed Noble to consistently beat the market in utilization. Since 2014, we've enjoyed utilization that is 24 percentage points higher than the average for the regions where we compete. For the full year 2020, Noble owned just 4% of the industry's assets, yet earned 12% of the total contracted term awarded, and this contracted term statistic is limited to new contracts and excludes contract extensions, so it does not pick up the significant term extension for the Noble Tom Madden in Guyana. We are committed to maximizing returns to our shareholders.
In recent years, we have taken a number of actions to improve our cost structure while making sure that we maintain the high level of safety and operating performance that our customers expect from Noble. We have reduced rig operating costs, made structural changes to our shore-based support, and maintained a disciplined approach to both fleet management and our bidding strategy for new tenders. All economic decisions are based on a comprehensive and balanced understanding of all relevant costs and benefits. For example, we strongly believe that our decision to dispose of five rigs last year, as well as move expeditiously to dispose of the Bora and Mistral, is the right economic decision for our shareholders.
As shown on Page 15, all of these actions, including reduced interest expense as a result of our restructuring process, have resulted in a meaningful reduction to what we classify as our fully burdened break-even day rate. Our fully burdened break-even day rate includes all direct costs related to a rig, as well as an allocation of all other indirect costs. This is comprehensive, and each indirect cost is fully allocated across the operating rigs. All costs within Noble are included in this break-even day rate. For example, shore-based burden, interest expense, cash taxes, CapEx, and downtime. For our drill ships, our fully burdened break-even day rate is below $200,000 per day, and a high-spec jackup is below $100,000 per day. This is a meaningful reduction from where we were just two years ago, and the current market is not far from these rates.
We are constantly evaluating ways to further reduce our cost structure. Successfully integrating Pacific Drilling into Noble and realizing the synergies will help to reduce the break-even day rate shown on slide 15 even further, as we can allocate shore-based support over a larger number of rigs. We believe this is the right way to think about the appropriate daily cost for a rig, and it's key to how we manage our business. We have a capital structure that provides through-cycle flexibility while also allowing us to take advantage of growth opportunities like the transaction we announced today. Slide 16 includes some of the highlights around our balance sheet. Our debt balance is below $400 million. We have a liquidity of over $600 million, and we have no debt maturities until 2025. Additionally, our credit facility has built-in flexibility to facilitate M&A.
As part of the Pacific Drilling acquisition, we will receive cash of approximately $30 million at closing. We are committed to maintaining our conservative balance sheet in a strong liquidity position. The Noble platform has significant growth potential in a recovering market. We've taken steps to position our assets to capitalize on their highest and best use, as well as made the appropriate decisions around our cost structure. We believe that oil and gas will continue to be an important component of the world's energy mix, and as demand recovers, that's some interesting tailwinds lie ahead for our sector. On April 1st, Noble celebrates the beginning of its 100th year as a contract drilling company. The last few years will definitely go down as some of the most challenging and disruptive periods in our company's and our industry's history.
But I could not be prouder of the entire Noble team for rising and meeting each of the myriad challenges we have faced. Our business is run by people, and offshore and onshore, we have the best. As the market continues to evolve, so do the needs of our customers. In addition to demanding first-class operational performance, they are seeking closer partnerships on topics such as technology and sustainability. Seeking closer collaboration with our customers is in Noble's DNA. Given our premium assets, highly talented employees, long operating history, and geographic footprint, we are ideally positioned to create value for both Noble and our customers as we move forward together. We are excited and energized about the combination with Pacific Drilling. It is the right strategic move for both companies, and we believe the combination will create significant value for all stakeholders.
We look forward to closing and integrating the acquisition in an efficient manner. These moves position Noble to be the platform for growth in the offshore drilling industry as we look forward to our next 100 years. Thank you for your time today and your interest in Noble, and please stay safe.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference call. We thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.