Stena Drilling has “pulled back” from making redundancies after securing fresh North Sea work with Total.
In February the Aberdeen-based firm was planning to cut 128 workers on three of its drilling rigs.
But it has secured a new contract for work at Total’s Glendronach prospect west of Shetland, allowing it to put the move on hold.
The work will last up to 120 days and will commence next month.
Managing director Erik Ronsberg said: “The way things are going at the moment we may be rehiring later.
“We were facing a redundancy process, but that has now been put on hold and if we get the contracts that we are hoping to obtain we might be in a position to rehire later in the year.
“We are absolutely delighted to get the work with Total which is a company that worked with us in 2011 in West Africa. The relationship has been wonderful with them.
“The important thing really is that it’s work and one of my jobs is to keep spirits in the company and this helps to keep things quite positive.”
He added: “At the beginning of this year we were very concerned about our backlog.
“We had operations in Guyana but we were concerned about the lack of contracts that we had signed.
“Within a matter of a couple months things turned around and that was largely by discussions that had had with Total and other oil companies.”