Despite its bullish view on the drybulk market, Greek drybulk shipper and deepwater driller DryShips Inc's will continue to place bets on its laggard drilling segment, a top executive said.

"Our focus right now remains on drilling, that's where a large part of our capital investment has been put in," Chief Operating Officer Pankaj Khanna told Reuters in a telephonic interview.

"We have to first sort out our drilling segment and then think of new investments in the future on the drybulk side."

DryShips, which started out as a dry bulk shipper registered in Greece in 2004, soon turned its sights on the then lucrative deepwater drilling business.

The company has been channelling money into its drilling business, Ocean Rig, which started off with impressive results, has seen a steady dip in revenue over the past two quarters.

All of the company's existing drybulk fleet of 39 carriers is currently locked up under long-term charters, which takes playing on the spot market out of the equation.

While analysts say the company could benefit from turning its attention back to the business it started out doing -- shipping, Khanna differs on this.

"As a drybulk shipper with a fleet of 39 vessels we cannot make a significant difference by buying one or two ships," Khanna said. "I cannot give you a timeframe for when we would buy more drybulk ships."

However, Khanna said he was positive on the dry bulk market's prospects, driven particularly by Indian demand.

"As a drybulk player, I would be very much focussed on India going forward," Khanna said. "Import volumes of coal into India are going to grow exponentially in the next few years."

The Baltic Exchange's main sea freight index, which tracks rates to ship dry commodities, has been rising steadily helped by continued cargo activity.

The index, which gauges the cost of shipping commodities including iron ore, cement, grain, coal and fertiliser, last week rose to its highest levels, and has risen nearly 30 percent in the past month.

However, since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico started last month, DryShips has lost about 20 percent of its market value, in line with the drilling index, and the most among its dry bulk peers including Eagle Bulk Shipping , Diana Shipping and Excel Maritime .

The spill, caused by the explosion of a Transocean rig, has raised concerns about safety and efficiency, especially for newer entrants into the drilling business such as DryShips.

Oil tanker Tsakos Energy Navigation , which had plans to enter the offshore drilling industry, recently backed out in the wake of the oil spill.

While Khanna said the spill would not hurt its prospects of getting a charter, the prospects of an IPO of the company's drilling segment remains a concern.

"In this uncertain market we are not going in for the IPO."

However, DryShips still currently expects to spend a whopping $693 million on its drilling segment, compared with a meagre $10 million on its drybulk segment.

Khanna said the maximum EBITDA that the company could get from a drybulk carrier costing about $40 million to $50 million was about $7 million per vessel, compared with about $100 million of EBITDA from a drillship costing over $600 million. (Reuters)