Asia Pacific

Maintaining and increasing production volumes from existing wells and facilities is a major priority for operators in the Asia Pacific. The region suffers from a 10% annual decline in recovery, 80% of the basin’s fields are operating in the brownfield phase and a huge volume of well stock (40%-50%) is currently shut in and not
producing.

Globally there has also been a 25% increase in the abandonment of existing wells (Almukhaitah et al, Fonoiki 2013) and a 65% decline in the oil price, resulting in a huge cut in CAPEX for new field development (U.S. Energy Information Administration EICA 2015).

An interview with Erik Dietrichson, Manager – Eastern Region Well Intervention Service, FMC Technologies

Perspectives and development of the RLWI business

Riserless Light Well Intervention or RLWI – is the term used to describe the method for performing inspection and maintenance of subsea wells from a monohull vessel by sluicing a toolstring suspended in a wireline into the subsea well under full pressure, but without using a high pressure riser. RLWI is a cost efficient method as it can be performed from monohull vessels rather than costly drilling rigs. Wireline operations are used to perform production logging by measuring the locations of liquid in-flow and water content, to install a plug to isolate intervals with high inflow of reservoir water and to re-perforate the well casing by use of explosives to establish a new production interval at a higher level. It is also possible to increase the production rate from a well by removing scale growth that will reduce the well’s flow area. Another routine operation is to install a so-called insert-down-hole-safety-valve, to replace the function of the initially installed safety valve.

Fishing is often a complex operation that can require more than a single run due to partial recovery of the fish or discovery of unexpected conditions.

This month’s video is a succession of clips recorded with EV’s Slickline Memory camera where a customer in South East Asia progressed through their recovery operation, progressively understanding the exact conditions throughout the different stages.

No special preparation was required as the jobs were run in a dry gas environment.

After a first run that accurately identified the top of wire, a wire cutter was run in hole and held up at an unexpected depth. The pin had to be sheared to release the cutter and the next camera run identified a slickline bird nest.

With this information, a significant amount of slickline was recovered and another camera was run to assess the results. The new top of fish, a slickline fishing head is clearly seen, followed by the top of a sidewall cutter.

After latching onto the sidewall cutter, another camera is run. This time, the sidewall cutter is found centred, which allowed the correct selection of fishing tools.

On recovering the sidewall cutter, another camera was run to check the condition of the wire below it. The last segment of video shows yet another slickline bird nest.

After multiple runs and several days, the customer successfully concluded the operation relying throughout on EV’s Slickline Memory Camera, a battery powered optical camera that records up to 5 hours of HD colour video images at 30 frames per second. Acquisition, as in this case, can be continuous; however the tools can also be programmed to record as many as 60 segments, an efficient and cost effective solution to diagnosing complex or changing downhole conditions over an extended period of time.