Offshore staff
ABERDEEN, UK – Add Energy and Trendsetter Engineering will provide well control support and access to their relief well injection spool (RWIS) to a well due to be drilled this spring in the Norwegian Barents Sea.
If called on, the RWIS system should facilitate high rate kill requirements through a single relief well.
This, the duo claims, would allow the operator to increase the flexibility and redundancy of well kill operations by relocating pumping and storage to dedicated pumping vessels.
The RWIS has been designed to increase the pumping capacity of a single relief well by facilitating pumping of kill mud at rates above 200 bbl/min through a single relief well, using multiple vessels.
Normally, multiple relief wells require the attendance of multiple mobile offshore drilling units.
The RWIS is installed on the relief well wellhead beneath the BOP to provide additional flow connections into the wellbore. By means of high‐pressure flex lines, the inlets allow pumping units from separate floating vessels (in addition to the relief well rig) to ensure a high‐rate dynamic kill.
According to Add Energy/Trendsetter, access to the RWIS will provide the (unnamed) Barents Sea operator with extra security, ensuring that a blowout – which would typically require more than one intercept – can be killed with a single relief well.
This, they claim, reduces the risk for the entire well control operation. In addition, the RWIS kits could allow the operator to increase the size of the completions to increase the production rate, and this is a development that could help take marginal developments forward, they add.
Prior to securing this contract, Add Energy undertook a blowout and kill simulation study to verify that a worst-case blowout during drilling of the upcoming well could be controlled by a single relief well.
It concluded that the RWIS would significantly increase the kill mud pumping capacity and the likelihood of a successful kill operation in the event of a blowout.
Currently the RWIS is stored at Trendsetter’s Global Readiness Center in Houston. It can be mobilized within 24 hours in the event of an uncontrolled hydrocarbon release.
02/27/2018
