North Sea Operator Conductor Recovery

Overview

Control Cutter completed a 2 well conductor recovery project on historical UK installation for a North Sea Operator.

Utilizing the DecomCutter and DecomDart the conductor recovery of two wells was successfully completed, each in less than one day. The wells consisted of 26” conductor with a 20” casing that were partially cemented.

All wells and conductor operation was planned done from the drill floor onboard the platform and a site survey was completed to ensure all interphases were managed. A plan for utilizing the DecomCutter & DecomDart was developed in collaboration between Control Cutter, Operator and the rig crew to ensure a safe and efficient installation and operation.

The two well trial was completed with the tooling positioned next to eachother whereas for the full scope of remaining 39 wells is planned to be executed with a vertical stack. The 385ft conductors weighed approximately 90-100mT with a plan to section into 35ft pieces weighing 10-13mT for backload. In total the DecomCutter completed 22 cuts and DecomDart 24 pins on the project. Control Cutter also supplied equipment for lifting and handling the conductors.

Background

In February 2020, the Operator confirmed it will not restart production from the field following production being shut down in late 2019.

The Operators’ ambitions is to be in the forefront when it comes to reduced emissions and improved HSE in all their upcoming decommissioning projects.

Embracing new technology that will allow the Operator to meet their targets, Control Cutter was contacted to look into optimizing the conductor recovery scope.

Challenges

The goal for this operation was to prove the technology through retrieving multistring conductors on the wells. To optimize footprint of equipment a frame and base was manufactured to enable equipment to operate on side of each other.

The systems is remotely operated, including the fully integrated skidding functionality for both tools which eliminate the need for any manual handling in between and significantly reduce the time spent in red-zone.

Once the equipment was rigged up both wells were sectioned into 11 pieces each where each well took less than a day including handling for the cut-out sections from drill floor and down to pipe deck.

The operation was executed by Control Cutter crew consisting of 4 technicians with excellent assistance from the rig crew.

Most of the pinning operations was carried out in less than 2 minutes while all cuts was done in less than five minutes on this configuration.