A MASSIVE yellow structure near Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference centre is being hailed by international oilfield service firm Expro as one of the most significant and innovative pieces of technology the subsea sector has seen.
Expro says its new AX-S system – being tested at Weatherford’s technology and training centre will change the way oil and gas companies access and work on their subsea wells, saving them valuable time and money.
There are an estimated 4,000 oil and gas producing subsea wells across the globe and this number is growing all the time.
Current well interventions normally require the use of equipment positioned overhead as work is carried out, which adds to daily rig costs totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Expro says its new system, which is 110 feet tall and weighs 220 tonnes – can be deployed from a boat and lowered on to subsea wells in up to 10,000ft of water.
David Shand, Expro’s AX-S managing director, said: “Over the next few weeks our team will be putting the AX-S equipment through its paces as we come towards the end of its seven-year development and qualification programme.
“The system will then be transported up to Peterhead, where we will make use of the excellent facilities there to load it on to a boat. It will then head out to sea for the final stages of its trials.”
More than 200 companies were involved in the creation and development of AX-S, 65% of them from Scotland.
Expro has 80 employees working exclusively on the project, in which it has invested about £100million.
Meanwhile, Expro has won an Offshore Technology Conference award for its FlowCAT wireless safety valve, which has just completed six months of field tests in Italy.