NOVEMBER 15-16 will see the Intervention & Coiled Tubing Association partner the Society of Petroleum Engineers as co-organisers of the 2011 SPE ICoTA European Well Intervention Conference in Aberdeen.
This is valuable, highly- focused platform for delegates . . . many of them well intervention specialists . . . to share industry best practice and pioneering technologies. It is not just about new or existing technologies, but the whole business of well intervention as operators in the still high-cost North Sea seek to maximise production.
This is about innovation . . . adding value to the industry through increased recovery, but which is tempered by risk reduction, enhanced safety performance and minimal environmental impact.
And well intervention absolutely fits with the huge “brownfield” push that is under way and, as it turns out, the challenges of decommissioning fields at the end of their economic life.
Current chairman of the ICoTA Europe Chapter, Rob Grassick, says the work of the association’s members is more relevant and important to the long-term wellbeing of the North Sea than ever before.
“The 17th European Well Intervention Conference will show that more and more industry professionals are recognising the value of well intervention,” says Mr Grassick.
“It continues to provide oil companies with multiple opportunities to increase production from what is, after all, a mature province, by using established and new technologies and methods . . . more safely, smarter and with greater efficiency than ever.
“Obviously for the UKCS (UK Continental Shelf), there is going to be less drilling in the future and it will become increasingly important to look after existing well-stock. That means applying the latest thinking in intervention technologies and capability to assure integrity in order to maximise hydrocarbons recovery.”
OK, but what is different today, after all, a variety of well intervention techniques have been around for a long time . . . decades?
“What we see as a key challenge is being able to accomplish more with less . . . by combining technologies so as one can take multiple data read-outs from a single intervention, instead of doing a number of interventions in a well to gather a complete dataset. This basically means making use of combination (modular) tool strings,” says Mr Grassick.
“For example, one could conduct an integrity inspection of a wellbore whilst also monitoring flow rates. And there are new wireline (slickline) systems equipped to enable live data transmissions back to the surface to enable on-the-spot assessments, rather than having to conduct post-intervention analysis based on data recorded and stored downhole; in other words, real-time intervention.”
In any one year, hundreds of interventions are routinely conducted across the North Sea well-stock, some of which is more than 40 years old. The task is straightforward enough with a dry riser well, but is necessarily more complex and costly where subsea wells are involved.
Indeed, there has been a significant effort made over the past 10 years or so to develop and offer a reliable, cost-effective means of conducting subsea interventions. Island Offshore of Norway and Expro Group of Aberdeen are examples of companies that are investing heavily in this capability.
A decade ago, the subsea well population in UK waters had reached 600; there are considerably more today. The picture is similar in Norway; indeed there are some very large modern developments where the primary offshore component is subsea, notably Ormen Lange and Snohvit.
Wherever in the North Sea, it is clear that the well services supply chain and operators are increasingly united in the quest for innovative and more cost-effective ways of re-entering existing production wells, not just those of core fields but also satellites and smaller standalone pockets where the economics of their development was marginal at the outset.
The basic premise is that, even with a field that was on an economic knife-edge when developed or has since been rendered so by increased taxation, it is cheaper to try and clean-up an existing well in an effort to boost and/or prolong production than to drill a replacement or even abandon a marginalised asset.
“The future is about taking a mix of conventional and novel intervention techniques and technologies and coming up with innovative new approaches . . . bringing something different to the marketplace,” says Mr Grassick.
He believes that bodies such as the Industry Technology Facilitator can be very helpful . . . by blending companies and ideas into joint industry projects and other ventures.
And he suggests that innately conservative operators really are receptive to new concepts.
“UK operators are definitely more willing to try than in the past. They’re getting a bit more like the Norwegians, especially where they see the possibility of adding value to their assets through improved productivity, better reserves access and a need for fewer people, therefore improved safety.”
ICoTA sees another important market opening up for its members . . . decommissioning, though well abandonments per se have been commonplace for some years.
The decommissioning market is set to grow over the next 20 years with an anticipated value of £30-35billion ($43-50billion) covering everything from well abandonment to the removal of well and platform infrastructure.
Grassick: “One of the many challenges for our industry is the ageing well stock and potential lack of information on many of these wells with some of the subsea assets shut in for a significant time period prior to the abandonment phase.
“It is important in the well abandonment process that there is proven access to the wellbores and integrity to allow operations to be carried out safely.
“An increasingly important aspect is dealing with subsea assets, which is where light well intervention vessels (LWIVs) are increasingly proving their worth by carrying out pre-abandonment workscopes and preparing wells for full-rig abandonment.
“Platform wells are also being intervened up front of rig crew arrival to prepare for Xmas tree removal and BOP (blow-out preventer) installation.
“Technology is starting to play a key hand in the abandonment process. New tools have been developed to allow wells to be plugged, deal with issues in the subsea equipment and service the intervention shortfalls that have surfaced in the well planning. Intervention and coil tubing will play a major part in the growing well abandonment and decommissioning market.”
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