Eldon Ball - Houston
Total infrastructure capex offshore Australia is expected to rise steeply over the next five years to a peak in 2010, then settle into an average of around $4 billion per year, according to forecasts by energy analystsInfield Systems.
The pressure to find energy resources for neighboring Asia-Pacific countries has become more acute with the transition of Indonesia from a net exporter to a net importer of hydrocarbon products. Australia, with an established culture of developing natural resources, and a geographical position conducive to servicing these markets, is jostling to fill this shortfall.
Infield Systems’ associate analyst,Julian Callanan, and data manager, Dr. Roger Knight, look at the growing offshore industry of Australia, discuss what drives key developments in the area, and what may limit this market’s future growth, beginning on page 34.
Rigless well intervention proves value off Australia
In 2007, Woodside Energy contracted TSMarine to perform the first fully integrated rigless subsea well intervention project in the Asia-Pacific region on the Vincent field development off Western Australia.
Phase 1 of the project, completed earlier this year, was operated from the intervention vesselHavila Harmony in a water depth of 372 m (1,220 ft) and reaching downhole depths of more than 1,450 m (4,757 ft). This was the first deployment and installation on wire of subsea trees from a monohull vessel in the Asia-Pacific, and also the first subsea well intervention using wireline services from a monohull in Australian waters.
To date, seven subsea tree installations have been completed successfully, followed by wireline intervention to commission wells for operation to/from the host facility, an FPSO. TSMarine also has severed and recovered numerous P&A’d wellheads from earlier wells drilled on the field.
For more details and an analysis of how offshore operators globally increasingly recognize the benefits of conducting well operations without a traditional rig, see the report byTom Leeson of TSMarine (Contracting) beginning on page 38.
Just how far will they go?
As BP prepares to inaugurate its Liberty ultra extended reach drilling (ERD) program in the Beaufort Sea, a program that is likely to shatter all global ERD records, Dr. Jerome J. Schubert, for one, suggests it may not be a long-standing milestone.
“I have no idea where the limits are (in ERD drilling),” says the assistant professor and holder of the Larry Cress Faculty Fellowship in Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M University. “Certainly, torque and drag is an issue in these ultra long wellbores, but the technology is definitely there to continue to extend the reach.”
This summer, BP began a seismic survey to support a technologically advanced drilling program scheduled to begin in 2010 with a specially designed arctic drilling rig. Plans call for up to six ultra ERD wells – four producers and two injectors. The wells, guided by 3D seismic imagery, will extend 2 mi (3 km) deep and as far as 8 mi (13 km) out into the Beaufort Sea off Alaska.
In what BP Alaska President Doug Suttles said late this summer “will set a new standard for arctic oilfield engineering and development,” Liberty will be developed from an existing satellite pad that is part of the Endicott field. Liberty will include no offshore platform, drilling island, or subsea pipeline. “These will be the longest wells ever drilled, and will allow us to develop a new offshore reservoir with the least environmental impact,” Suttles said.
For a full discussion of the reach for new ERD distances, see the analysis byContributing Editor Jim Redden, beginning on page 30.
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