The Phase II plug and abandonment (P&A) campaign of the Chinguetti Field offshore Mauritania, which was stalled due to Covid-19 complications, has seen the successful intervention and barrier placement on all 15 wells since its resumption with projected completion of the entire abandonment scope by the end of the year, according to Expro and PETRONAS.
The Phase II P&A campaign
Phase II of the P&A campaign on the PETRONAS-owned Chinguetti Field began in late 2019, carried out by Pacific Drilling LLC, who had commissioned the help of Expro to provide an Intervention Riser System (IRS) and associated surface support equipment to be deployed from the Pacific Drilling drillship, the Pacific Santa Ana.
The award to Expro included a range of services such as the subsea well access system, surface flowhead, umbilicals, topside control equipment and IWOCS (installation and workover control system) package. Expro would also provide an onshore project management team to support Pacific Drilling throughout the project planning and execution phases. For their part, over the course of the 2019 summer, Expro carried out system integration testing on the equipment before shipping and installing it on the Pacific Santa Ana in Las Palmas in October 2019.
Expro, in turn, requisitioned for the campaign the support of Worldwide Oilfield Machine (WOM) who were contracted to provision the subsea well access system and a technical support team. This formidable team were contracted to complete the Phase II P&A project in Mauritania, which would take an estimated 360 days.
Covid-19 stalls progress
By late 2019 the campaign was in full swing (with the abandonment of the first well completed in December) so that by the end of March, subsea well access had concluded on nine of the 15 wells. Of course, then the Covid-19 pandemic struck and operators and oilfield owners across the world were forced to stall projects and forego operations as they dealt with closed borders, new quarantine rules, social distancing and keeping their employees safe. Such was the case on the Chinguetti field, where a strong start to the campaign made at the beginning of 2020 was drawn to a sudden halt with PETRONAS, due to the enforcement of travel restrictions, forced to declare force majeure on its contract with Pacific Drilling effective on 29 March 2020. Subsequently, Pacific Drilling agreed to leave the rig on stand-by at 35% of its contractual day rate until March 2021 and on the 31 March made sail for Las Palmas.
Keith Allan, Global Sales Manager at Expro, spoke to Offshore Network to reveal the challenges that his company faced during this difficult time, and how the rig was eventually returned to Mauritanian waters. He commented, “The main challenge we faced at that time was around travelling and personnel. Although we were shutdown at the end of March we still had some personnel in West Africa for a few months and faced challenges getting them home due to all borders being closed.
“We also had to keep skeleton crews on the vessel throughout the pandemic to ensure all routine and preventative maintenance was carried out on the equipment. They continued to perform to extremely high standards considering the global situation that meant extended trip durations, isolation periods and everything else that went along with travelling during the pandemic. The team were a critical part of the success of this project, providing a seamless operational start up when operations resumed.”
Returning to Mauritania
As Mr. Allan alluded, eventually there was light at the end of the tunnel and on 23 December 2020 the Pacific Santa Ana departed Las Palmas to resume the campaign in Africa. Since operations started up again in January, the subsea well access operations have been carried out effectively and efficiently and Allan proudly reported that as of 4 April the remaining six wells had been successfully intervened and Expro’s equipment offloaded.
Mr. Allan continued, “After the pandemic the six wells were challenging with regards to personnel movement, however all equipment and personnel continued to perform to an extremely high standard. One of the highlights for us was the ability to retrieve the Christmas trees with the IRS without requiring an additional run subsea. The IRS system’s compact nature combined with Pacific Drilling’s dual Derrick capabilities saved considerable rig time.
“This was Expro’s first venture into the IRS market therefore, we had to form new offshore and support teams to ensure we provided a quality service for the duration of the campaign. Our team’s skillsets were easily transferred to run this new system, and although we did employ experienced personnel, the crew was mainly made up of our people from the existing subsea product line.
“On a management level, it worked well. We had project managers onshore in Mauritania working from the Pacific Drilling offices to provide support for the operations duration," Mr Allan added.
Eyes set on the future
With the initial P&A of the 15 wells on Chinguetti Field the campaign has nearly reached its conclusion with some more work required to mop up the heavily lifting that has just been completed. PETRONAS, in a statement to Offshore Network, have confirmed “The campaign is progressing as planned and is projected to be completed by the end of this year.”
With vaccine distribution picking up speed across the globe and with the industry continuing to show the resilience and ability to work round the restrictions whilst maintaining the safety of their employees (as this campaign showed), there seems little reason to doubt this projection.
For Expro’s part, aside from some equipment remaining onboard for operations in a month or two, their role has been played to fruition and has marked a successful venture, which has overcome some serious challenges in the process.
As Mr. Allan concluded, “This was our first venture into the intervention riser system market, and we were able to carry out the campaign with no non-productive time (NPT) incurred. From an Expro point of view this has been a very successful project and something we are very proud and grateful to have played our part in. The success of this project has led to another contract award for a client in Australia, for a very similar scope of work and will commence in early 2022 once the equipment has completed a maintenance campaign in preparation for the work.
At the subsea sub-Saharan Africa well intervention webinar, hosted by Baker Hughes, Bayo Ojulari, Managing Director of Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo), participated in a fiery discussion on the advantages of riserless light well intervention (RLWI) compared to rig-based, riser intervention alongside host Sola Adekunle, Managing Director of Cranium Engineering; Matt Vick, Senior Subsea Engineer at BP; and Feyi Okungbowa, Executive Director of Baker Hughes.
Beginning the session, host Adekunle, explained that since its introduction in the North Sea in the 1980’s more than 1,000 wells have been intervened across the world by means of RLWI bringing tangible benefits such as higher operator efficiency, lower spread rates and increased manoeuvrability. This begs the question, is it a no brainer? And if so, why in the SSA market, where wells are in dire need of optimisation (the average age of subsea wells will be the highest in the world by 2025), has RLWI been so underutilised?
The benefits of RLWI
Vick, certainly believed there was no question that RLWI was the way forward and commented, “BP has a long history with RLWI across the world and we are pushing for this to be used more. It is high capability, especially as wireline and E-line advances; it is more efficient; and has a lower cost in general.”
“A lot depends on the scope as well. You do lose some efficiency on downhole runs due to the fact you are recovering tool strings through open water and on a wireline run by wireline run basis it is a little bit slower. But you tend to gain this efficiency back when it comes to mobilisation and then getting the vessel offsite when the job is completed. So, you gain on the back end and beginning to offset the speed you lose in the middle (and you can even optimise the sequence in the middle). So even if it does take longer on the critical path, you will still have a lower spread rate and will achieve a big gain.”
As Vick outlined however, there are still some things where you do need a high pressure intervention riser like coil tubing and cement spotting, but really there is not a huge number of operations that riserless cannot accomplish outside the current realm of copper tubing. “Right now, BP’s push is to go with riserless systems as you can structure interventions to not require coil tubing or capabilities of heavier based solutions. You can accomplish 95% of your objectives at a much lower cost and this has been our push in shallow and deep water wells.”
“There are also safety benefits as well. With riser interventions you often have a direct conduit from well to the surface, meaning employees are working in close proximity to live well hydrocarbons. However, with riserless you don’t bring tool string back to the surface through a hydrocarbon field riser, so the only hydrocarbons you should see coming back to the surface is going to be flushing lubricator out to get your well shut in. Personnel safety is therefore increased with some real improvements in HSE,” Vick concluded.
The SSA market
Ojulari, commented that around 15 years ago when the industry started to really develop deepwater wells in SSA it was more straightforward: all that was needed was a rig to drill wells that were very high producing.
Ojulari said, “Unfortunately, the 50,000 barrels per day wells are no longer very much in play now and most drilled are now producing at lower rates. Many are becoming old and natural production declines by about 10-15%. Now the challenge is that in order to sustain production we try to drill up wells and utilise rig-based intervention, but despite that the SSA region still suffers about 6-8% decline. This means we cannot drill or rig- based intervene our way to fully address our production decline. In order to fully meet this, we need to leverage the rigless and riserless intervention for us to be able to capture the low hanging fruits. We have been a bit slow going for it but for me there is significant opportunity here.”
Holding RLWI back?
Delighted with the comments from Ojulari and Vick, Okungbowa, added, “Everything said so far is music to my ears as a service provider. Baker Hughes has made a lot of investment in RLWI not only in SSA but globally, and it is an area of growth we see. But we cannot understand why we are not seeing more RLWI in SSA? In 2019 there were a couple of interventions, and obviously 2020 was disruptive but even still the opportunities were just not there. With the ageing of the assets and store base I struggle to understand why this market is not moving as quickly as it should- all the equipment is ready in the region, we have spent years training people for interventions and yet the uptake is not there.”
Answering Okunbowa, Ojulari commented that perhaps RLWI was not being taken up as much as it should due to the lack of awareness of business owners and business decision makers. In his experience, the main discussions around this form of intervention were centred around limitations and risks and often the total cost saving is not immediately obvious to the core leaders. “For me, the first thing that needs to happen more is around better education, and this seminar is a good example. More engagement and connection in promoting the capabilities of promoting riserless, sharing success and putting into numbers where it can save in comparison to the other options for intervention that we have.”
Collaboration and transparency
The panellist also noted that key to ensuring more RLWI is transparency and collaboration. Building portfolios, and properly evaluating closing wells that require intervention, and then working with other operators to organise campaigns together will ultimately reduce costs and lead to more well optimisations being performed.
Okunbowa said, “What I would say to Ojulari and Vick and every operator is that we need to be strategic, we need transparency and we need to almost become partners. If you bring problems to us we can then bring solutions and help structure it in a way that unlocks value. We have heard of rig clubs but we now need to get comfortable with a vessel club situation. Being able to do a campaign across 3-4 companies back-to-back using the same assets, each operator will see significant cost savings.”
Highlighting the additional value of larger campaigns, Vick added, “You gain efficiency from crews repeating a task, and small learnings can add up. If you have many operators with different wells lined up, you gain efficiency from one well to the other whereas you lose efficiency with one-offs. With drilling operations you can see drilling times cut in half by the end of the campaign, and it is the same opportunity here. As a vessel keeps working you get gains in safety, efficiency, performance across the board. Success breeds success. I feel if we can show this being done with some big campaigns with good results we can get this success moving and more operators will see it makes commercial sense to collaborate.”
Unlocking value
Adekunle concluded the session, “Riserless intervention saves money, increases production and can be used as a production maximisation tool rather than reaction tool. With collaboration between different disciplines, different contractors and services providers you can unlock value for operators. Really it is not about which operator or which service provider, it is about looking and seeing how much value the industry can unlock by using this technology.”
In the panel it was made abundantly clear that utilising RLWI, and collaborating on these campaigns, would ultimately unlock value for industry and these opportunities should be embraced rather than feared; as Okunbowa commented, "Don't be a dinosaur." But what was made clear most of all is that this would only be achieved through conversations such as these, to make clear the benefits, the cost savings, the success stories and not just the limitations of RLWI, to key decision makers and indeed the entire industry.
To listen to the full webinar, click here.
In their 2020 review Subsea 7 reported a net cost of US$70mn through dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and additional restructuring charges of US$86mn. Yet, despite this, the company suffered no contract cancellations and increased their backlog of work by 20% to US$6.2bn prompting calls of encouragement for the future, especially with the continuing market stabilisation of oil and gas and growth of the offshore renewables market.
In January, to cope with the Covid-induced difficulties and align with their strategic focus area ‘subsea field of the future – systems and delivery’, Subsea 7 streamlined their business by combining their SURF and conventional Life of Field units. The new Subsea and Conventional unit encompasses the full portfolio of services and products dedicated to the oil and gas industry that Subsea 7 has to offer including the integration of IRM and well intervention into the integrated field development solutions created by Subsea Integration Alliance to provide a holistic offering across the life cycle of client’s fields.
John Evans, Chief Executive Officer of Subsea 7, said, “In a challenging twelve months Subsea 7 responded well. The Covid-19 pandemic required radical changes to operations and had an adverse effect on the market for our oil and gas businesses. In response, we booked incremental operating costs, restructured our cost base, and recognised material impairments to goodwill and asset values. Yet, we continued to deliver projects to our clients, generated positive cash flow, reduced debt and increased our backlog. As a result of the efforts and dedication of our employees, we completed 20 projects in the year for 15 clients in 10 countries.”
These notable projects included continued work on BP’s Mad Dog 2 involving Seven Oceans and Seven Pacific; the completion of the Lape NE scope by Seven Seas in Brazil; several operations in the North Sea such as the completion of pipelay operations at Blythe; and the continued progress on the engineering and procurement phases of Sangomar in Senegal as well as Anchor, King’s Quay and Jack St Malo in the Gulf of Mexico.
Heading into 2021, with the pandemic in decline, Subsea 7 intends to continue progress on operations already underway and make up for the lost time suffered in 2020. In addition the company has been selected as the preferred supplier for several projects including Bacalhau, Scarborough, Pecan and Rovuma and was awarded a substantial contract by Cabinda Gulf Oil Company Limited (CABGOC) to construct and install the Lean Gas Platform (LGP) in Block-0 offshore Angola.
This report is in three parts: an introduction to the West African well intervention industry, case- studies in the region to highlight and notable service companies that work in the region.
The aim of this report is to give you an introduction to the market or an update if you’re already in the know.
In West Africa’s deepwater oil and gas patch, Riserless Light Well Intervention (RLWI) conducted from drilling or other support vessels is proving to be an important resource – providing a much faster and cheaper alternative to using rigs. A rising well intervention backlog and tight budgets means this effective solution needs to be quickly and widely deployed if legacy production declines are to be addressed.
This publication is a Special Report focused on Deepwater Solutions For West Africa’s Oil and Gas Industry, featuring the region’s major industry event, West African Offshore Well Intervention Conference (OWI WA). The event is focused on Subsea Well Intervention in the West Africa offshore market. It also covers latest trends and innovation in the industry.
This paper is designed to outline well intervention and P&A opportunities available to contractors in the West Coast of Africa by analysing regional levels of activity, operator well stock and major projects (part 1).
This paper is designed to outline well intervention and P&A opportunities available to contractors in the West Coast of Africa by analysing regional levels of activity, operator well stock and major projects (part 2).
Hear Amadasu Enorense, the Head, Upstream Monitoring and Regulations Division Department of Petroleum Resources, share the Nigerian forecast for well intervention activity in their offshore waters of the Gulf of Guinea.
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