Defuzzy Labs, one of the leading robotics companies specialising in unmanned systems in the UAE, collaborated with SubUAS, the US company behind the Naviator Air/Sea Drone platform, to demonstrate its latest robotics fleet management solution and shed light on the future of offshore inspections.
The demonstration, which was held at the AWS Energy Symposium in Houston, featured the Sharjah-based operator instructing a Naviator drone fleet to perform an inspection from over 11,000 kilometres away, alongside the SubUAS team based in New Jersey, USA.
The live demonstration showcased Defuzzy's latest development of its robotics fleet management solution, which uses AWS's Roborunner service to command multiple Naviator drones over the cloud. This scalable and modular solution enables Defuzzy to easily integrate robots of various makes, models, and forms into the fleet and control them. The cloud services will further help enhance remote monitoring solutions and complete accurate robotic inspections, thus improving the safety and efficiency of inspection operations.
During the demonstration, Defuzzy engineers stationed in Sharjah, UAE, displayed their ability to monitor and command multiple Naviator drones located in New Jersey, USA. The fleet management solution automatically planned a mission and assigned it to the available drone in the background, after which the Sharjah-based operator was seen monitoring the fleet's status and the live video stream of the inspection routine.
Adnane ElSoussi, CEO and Co-Founder, Defuzzy, said, “We are pleased to announce that Defuzzy’s robotics fleet management solution will be used to command a fleet of offshore robotic platforms, which will not just be limited to drones, but a combination of USVs (Unmanned Surface Vessels) and other drones. Our robotic fleet management solution eliminates many challenges associated with inspections of offshore facilities, such as adverse weather and harsh operational conditions, limited and poor communication, availability of multi-talented inspectors, difficulty to access spaces requiring special tooling and equipment, high-risk operational environment, and lastly, high operational costs.”
Archer Oiltools has been awarded a two-year contract extension from Equinor Energy AS in the North Sea.
The contract covers plug and abandonment (P&A), fishing and downhole mechanical isolation equipment. Based on current activity levels, the additional backlog is estimated at US$60mn for the 24 months period which will commence in June this year.
“This is a strategically important extension for Oiltools in one of our core markets, which further strengthens our footprint and presence in the region. Our technology and strong record of execution in the North Sea makes us a supplier of choice for Equinor. We continue to support Equinor’s requirements for safe and efficient operations while providing proprietary low carbon solutions and operational efficiencies to further their energy transition goals,” said Hugo Idsøe, Vice President, Archer Oiltools.
At the Offshore Well Intervention Middle East 2022 conference, Mustafa Adel Amer, Senior Petroleum Production Technology Engineer and Well Integrity Management at BAPETCO, guided the audience through an expert case study focused on well production and methane abatement.
Adel Amer began by explaining the latest goals set out to reduce methane emissions whereby, at COP26, more than 100 countries signed the global methane pledge to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030. Methane emissions are now at the centre of climate discussions and the abatement of them is, and will become, key to the competiveness of fossil fuels in the future.
The upstream sector, Adel Amer continued, is assumed to contribute around 80% of the methane emissions in the industry, with the majority of this coming from venting operations. Given the global desire to abate methane emissions, it is therefore of paramount importance for operators to reduce this without affecting production rates.
In pursuit of this, Adel Amer presented a case study from his company which focused on treating liquid loaded gas wells in a method that reduced methane emissions and saved significant money.
Adel Amer said, “Liquid loading in a gas well is the inability of produced gas to produce the entrain liquids from the wellbore. Over time, gas velocity decreases and liquids in the well will impact the lift performance that reduce or even stop gas production.”
“Turner discovered the liquid loading could be projected by a droplet model illustrating when droplets move up or down depending on the velocity relative to a critical velocity.”
Adel Amer explained that is common to use VLP to diagnose liquid loading where, in practice, critical velocity is generally defined as the minimum gas velocity in the produced tubing required to produce with low probability of liquid loading risk.
“With the Turner approach, the droplets accumulate in the large ID section but bubble flow takes place at the very low gas flow rate, you need very low gas rate usually at the far left end of the VLP curve. In many cases you don’t see the size of liquid columns that you would expect to balance the drawdown when the well is shut in for cycles.”
Mustafa, in his presentation, presented technical analysis showed that wells that operate in their unstable, hydrostatic dominated, part of their VLP suffer from increased liquid holdup along the entire well.
“We therefore need to focus on increasing velocity across the entire well,” Adel Amer remarked.
In order to do so BAPETCO showed a solution performed on an old well located in an onshore gas field with over 10 wells suffering from liquid loading and run under manual unloading cycles. The well chosen was an old one, beyond 17 years of operation, which had a five inch completion. The task was to end the cyclic behaviour of wells to increase production and eliminate methane emissions.
Considering the context of the field and the company in terms of near wellbore damage after well killing and the well integrity manual that mandate having operable sub-surface safety value in all gas wells, the best solution as Adel Amer said, “was to run a velocity string without killing the well while maintaining the sub-surface safety valve operable and without reliance on a snubbing unit.”
They began by conducting surveillance to select the best candidate wells through in-house developed python code that analyse reservoir data, production data, well history, and well integrity history to gain insightful analytics of the well integrity failure history, potential gain, clearance of the well etc. They then selected candidates and examined the potential in terms of possibility of success and expected gain.
Once done, they went to the PIPESIM to model the surface network and make sure production gains coming from fixing the intermittency of the gas wells would not be constrained by network capacity or connection with other high pressure wells in the network.
The modelling results indicated that inserting 2 7/8 inch completions reduced the risk of liquid loading over the completion string and maintained liquid loading velocity ration favorable for stable gas production.
In practice, to run the velocity string without killing the well, without snubbing units and while having operable sub-surface safety valve, the operating included:
• Rigless inspection of the existing five inch completion and settling an isolation packer with surge disk.
• Workover to run the 2 7/8 inch and set an upper packer below the sub-surface safety valve.
• Rigless coiled tubing to unload the brine and break the surge disk.
Adel Amer said, “This was completed successfully and the project converted the well from one with a fluctuation intermittent behaviour to a more stable state. The stability of production increased to 2.5MMSCF/D after applying the velocity string, up from a 1.5MMSCF/D the day before the project.”
The project helps to achieve various positive results including:
• Cost reduction: the cost of using workover rig to run the 2 7/8 inch tubing inside the existing 5 inch completion was only 10% of a snubbing unit with payback time of 5-6 weeks.
• Increased the gas production rate by 1.5 times and condensate production by 3.8 times.
• The monthly reduced GHG emissions per well is equivalent to 4.4mn miles of passenger vehicle emissions.
• Reduced workload on production operations from elimination of manual unloading.
• Maintained compliance with well integrity standards.
Abel Amer concluded, “We now have a new way of dealing with intermittent gas wells which is less expensive, does not kill the reservoir and maintains an operable sub-surface safety valve. Even though liquid loading is a dynamic process, using PIPESIM provided very useful clue to estimate the liquid loading velocity ratio which was among the main design parameters.”
Abel Amer can be contacted through his LinkedIn profile here.
Petrofac, a leading provider of services to the global energy industry, and Promethean Decommissioning Company (PDC), a pure-play decommissioning operator, will come together to decommission the South Pass 60, South Pass 6 and East Breaks 165 fields, offshore Gulf of Mexico.
The substantial scope of work includes work on nine platforms, 200 wells and 32 pipeline segments, all of which will need to be safely and assuredly decommissioned.
PDC takes on the role of decommissioning operator and is responsible for fulfilling the field decommissioning orders received from the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement in February 2022.
Petrofac has been appointed by PDC as the decommissioning services provider in a contract valued at around US$200mn. The company will use its proven decommissioning programme management systems, tools, and processes to deliver the programme.
The PDC-Petrofac alliance has selected Danos, a leading Gulf of Mexico offshore services provider, for more than 75 years to support field operations and the decommissioning programme. With nearly 2,500 employees, Danos has a proven history of operational excellence and safe operations.
The project will be led from Houston, with the integrated alliance team using the latest digital software, including Petrofac’s proprietary project management tool Turus, to deliver the decommissioning project with comprehensive dashboards, transparency and assurance.
Nick Shorten, Chief Operating Officer for Petrofac’s Asset Solutions business, commented, “This significant contract recognises our industry-leading decommissioning programme management experience and our unique in-house capability to manage all well and asset decommissioning phases. It’s been more than four decades since Petrofac first began in Texas and in that time we have expanded our offshore capabilities across the globe. This expertise will be applied to the project, complemented by our already strong onshore presence in Texas.”
Aditya Singh, Founder and CEO, Promethean Energy Corporation added, “We are pleased to offer our new outsourced ‘decommissioning operator’ service to the industry and to commence activity on this major decommissioning project. We are fully aligned with all our stakeholders to improve environmental performance through the safe and efficient decommissioning of end-of-life assets. We accomplish this with a dedicated, fit-for-purpose entity, PDC, via an integrated operating service model and focused programme management. I am particularly pleased that the PDC and Petrofac alliance has been selected, leveraging the complementary strengths of both companies.”
Baker Hughes has launched the MS-2 Annulus Seal, designed to save substantial operational rig costs by reducing rig trips.
The new integrated sealing solution, the latest technological development to the MS-SN, has already been adopted by multiple customers in North and South America.
The MS-2 Annulus Seal integrates with Baker Hughes’ existing MS-800 wellhead system and helps to lower the cost of well construction and intervention, expands intervention options and ensures security and confidence of well integrity in challenging conditions.
“We constantly strive for technological optimisation and delivering the most advanced solutions to our subsea customers,” said Neil Saunders, Executive Vice President of Oilfield Equipment at Baker Hughes. “Through our new MS-2 Annulus Seal, we are helping to transform the subsea market and are developing quality technology that delivers long-term value, reliability and efficiencies for subsea customers.”
The MS-2 can be installed in a single trip, with an integrated lock ring that results in improved rig efficiency by providing immediate lockdown of up to 2mn pounds force without the need for a second trip, saving rig time. The MS-2 also provides easier access to wells, with no need for supplemental lockdown devices. It is tested to 20,000 psi, and to 200 load cycles ensuring life-of-field reliability and further demonstrating the seal integrity.
Andrea Sbordone, Business Development Manager at TechnipFMC, will describe four case studies of successful riserless light well intervention (RLWI) campaigns at the upcoming Offshore Well Intervention West Africa 2022 conference in Accra.
At the conference, which is running from 12-13 July, Sbordone will review the four campaigns which were performed by Island Constructor in West Africa, providing the opportunity for the audience to appreciate the efficiency of this fully integrated RLWI system.
At the session, Sbordone will assess how RLWI can effectively increase production at the lowest total cost in the upcoming 5th West Africa campaign running in Q4 2022 and Q1 2023.
To listen and participate in this exclusive session be sure to attend OWI WA 2022 which will play host to a range of key operators in the region including BP, Shell, Tullow Oil and more, as well as a range of experts from across the industry.
To learn more, be sure to download the event brochure here:
https://www.offsnet.com/owi-wa/conference-brochure
Or reach out to the details below:
Rachael Brand
Project Manager
T: +44 (0) 20 3409 3041
e:
David Carr, Senior Vice President – International at Helix Well Ops, will be hosting a session at the upcoming Offshore Well Intervention West Africa (OWI WA) which will look at the potential for light well intervention (LWI) in Africa.
Exclusively for attendees of the event, which is arriving in Accra from 12-13 July, Carr will examine examples of innovative LWI vessel based solutions for complex well integrity issues and production enhancement purposes that improve the efficiency of well intervention projects.
Despite the seemingly incredible benefits that can be achieved through the use of such vessels, there remains somewhat of a reluctance to make use of them in the West African region. However, with Covid-19 forcing oil companies to keep hold of capital wherever they can, LWI could provide a viable outlet by offering them the chance to achieve their offshore objects but at a much lower cost.
Carr will continue the session by reviewing multi-service campaigns completed on an integrated vessel and how this can solve a variety of challenges operators face when embarking on intervention projects.
Those attending OWI WA will then have the chance to engage in a discussion with the Helix representative to explore how collaboration with an international and multi-disciplinary team can lead to seamless operational efficiency.
Such unique sessions are not to be missed by anyone involved in the African offshore industry or those interested in squeezing more from their offshore operations. To learn more, be sure to download the event brochure here:
https://www.offsnet.com/owi-wa/conference-brochure
Or reach out to the details below:
Rachael Brand
Project Manager
T: +44 (0) 20 3409 3041
e:
Liebherr has announced that its Heavy Lift Crane (HLC) 295000 is on board the Orion and is ready to work on decommissioning projects.
The Orion is a next generation offshore installation vessel by DEME which is capable of installing windfarms and decommissioning ‘old’ energy platforms. On the vessel, Liebherr has delivered the HLC which is the largest crane the company has ever built, boasting a lifting capacity of 5,000 tonnes.
After its name-giving ceremony in Vlissingen, Netherlands, the vessel is now heading to help develop the offshore wind farm ‘Arcadis Ost I’ in the Baltic Sea.
“What we are witnessing here, is indeed a very memorable event. Fundamentally, it demonstrates what is achieved, when people are closely working together, especially alongside with a competent and reliable partner. Today, we are proud. In an extraordinary effort, our team at Liebherr brought this heavy lift crane up on this ship so now everyone can see what has been accomplished,” said Robert Pitschmann, Global Application Manager, Heavy Lift Offshore at Liebherr.
By the help of the compact design, the crane is destined to serve in the offshore market. For example the base column, being only 16.8 metres diameter, is unique in the market. The HLC 295000 requires little space on deck and offers more storage space for transportation. It is ready to take up its work in the ample field of the offshore industry. With its maximum capacity of 5,000 tons and an outreach of up to 151 metres, the HLC can manage large components, for example, during the decommissioning of offshore platforms.
A maximum lifting height of 175 metres enables the HLC 295000 to operate in the required height right away without special efforts. All this demonstrates that the heavy lift crane in general can be regarded as the ideal instrument for the challenges ahead within the changing field of energy production as well as in all related working areas closely related to it. The extraordinary efficiency, swift- and readiness when it comes to transporting, accuracy but also power give this Liebherr heavy lift crane and the HLC-Series an advancement due to its smart versatility.
A session on understanding wax formation in the TEN Field will be presented by Daniel Konadu, Production Chemist, Tullow Oil at the fast-approaching Offshore Well Intervention West Africa (OWI WA), to be held from 12-13 July, in the city of Accra, Ghana.
Participants will be given details, allowing for a better understanding of ‘wax’ and its process of formation. Daniel will also shed light on operational issues encountered by operators during and because of the wax formation and deposition.
The session is also said to be information-rich, as it examines the methods to prevent or remediate wax deposition to reduce flow assurance challenges. Daniel will further identify risk in operational tests, followed by a detailed study on wax deposition.
The upcoming OWI WA is said to be West Africa’s answer to issues relevant to operational obstacles in production. The event is also featuring experts, global and national level companies as well as seasoned service providers.
To learn more, be sure to download the event brochure here:
https://www.offsnet.com/owi-wa/conference-brochure
Or reach out to the details below:
Rachael Brand
Project Manager
T: +44 (0) 20 3409 3041
e:
C-Innovation, LLC (C-I), an affiliate of Edison Chouest Offshore (ECO) and its family of companies, have signed a two-year contract for continued Riserless Light Well Intervention (RLWI) services onboard the Island Venture offshore support vessel.
The new contract follows a previous agreement in which the Island Venture performed interventions on multiple deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico.
David Sheetz, C-Innovation’s Vice President, said, “This new award is a continuation of nearly three years of setting new standards in the RLWI space. We are constantly working to change the way the industry looks at RLWI work to increase production in this ever-changing market. We look forward to the next few years on this project, and we are already making plans to expand the offering, including numerous dock upgrades to facilitate even more efficient fluid handling and waste removals to minimise required between-wells maintenance time.”
With no safe vertical access to several subsea wells under a platform, the C-I Subsea Projects Group was able to find a solution by utilising a well service jumper to perform well interventions. This collaborative effort between C-I and the operator allowed C-I to perform the intervention without disrupting the platform’s operations.
George Wilson, C-I’s RLWI project manager, commented, “C-I is committed to ensuring the continual improvement of the quality, health, safety and environmental aspects of its operations and services. The two-year RLWI work is no exception: with over one million man-hours, C-I had zero recordable incidents. So far this year, C-I has clocked over 135,000 hours with no recordables.”
Sheetz added, “The contract award for additional RLWI work is a credit to the entire RLWI team. Our team continues to provide creative solutions and methodologies to perform interventions that have not been achievable from a conventional RLWI approach. The collaboration of various subsea disciplines within our group has contributed to the successes, and our offshore teams continue to deliver on every execution that comes their way. C-I’s subcontractors, Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Caltex Oil Tools, were also key to the new award. I am extremely proud to work with some of the brightest people in our industry.”
A presentation on well productivity practices will be delivered by Ejimofor Agbo, Senior Completions Engineer, NewcrossEP at the upcoming Offshore Well Intervention West Africa (OWI WA), which is to be held from 12-13 July, in the city of Accra, Ghana.
NewcrossEP is an exploration and production firm based in Nigeria and Ejimofor will be talking about the company’s innovative approach to water management via extended perforation. The speaker will discuss in length the approach to arresting the increase in water cut in a producing well, thereby reducing crude handling and transportation charges.
Participants will also be able to learn more about candidate selection and obtain a comprehensive analysis of datasets in maturing the candidate for execution. Ejimofor will also address establishing a selection of perforation intervals using cased hole logging and open-hole logging in selected sand conditions
The session will be concluded with participants being able to explore NewcrossEP’s project execution and well monitoring that has resulted in a shown appreciable drop in the water cut by 80%, as well as a corresponding increase in the oil gain by 20%.
OWI WA is set up to be the platform for discussion on the region’s offshore well intervention topics. The event is filled with experts from regulatory bodies, international and regional companies, alongside regulatory bodies and service providers.
To learn more, be sure to download the event brochure here:
https://www.offsnet.com/owi-wa/conference-brochure
Or reach out to the details below:
Rachael Brand
Project Manager
T: +44 (0) 20 3409 3041
e:
The Offshore Well Intervention West Africa 2022 (OWI WA), which be held in Accra from 12-13 July, will host a presentation by Matthew Vick, Senior Subsea Wells Engineer from bp.
Attendees will have the exclusive opportunity to learn about the company’s riserless intervention campaign in Gulf of Mexico. The project had showed a significant reduction in emissions when compared to traditional methods.
Vick will review the broad scope of well access equipment that can be utilised from a single vessel, including mechanical wireline, hydraulic via TRT, hydraulic via well service jumper hose and hydraulic via stimulation choke insert. During the talk, he will explore and provide a synopsis of the deliverables from the campaign, including well access, well integrity restoration, well surveillance, well stimulation and protection, and fishing.
OWI WA offers you an unrivalled opportunity to listen to the latest best practice from the Gulf of Guinea and addresses the most important well intervention issues facing West African operators.
To learn more, be sure to download the event brochure here:
https://www.offsnet.com/owi-wa/conference-brochure
Or reach out to the details below:
Rachael Brand
Project Manager
T: +44 (0) 20 3409 3041
e:
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