Well-Safe Solutions

Overview

Control Cutter completed a 9 well conductor recovery project on the Ketch Platform for Well-Safe Solutions in the Southern North Sea.

Utilizing the DecomCutter and DecomDart a 9 well conductor recovery was succesfully completed in 11 days. The wells consisted of multistring conductors with a variety of conductor and casing configuration where most were fully cemented and some grouted.

The 276ft conductors weighed approximately 80-90mT with a plan to section into 40ft pieces weighing 10-13mT for backload.

In total the DecomCutter completed 54 cuts and DecomDart 51 pins on the project. Control Cutter also supplied equipment for lifting and handling the conductors.

Background

The Ketch field produced from 1999 to 2018 when DNO decided to decommission the platform. DNO brought in Well-Safe Solutions to plan and execute the downhole P&A and Conductor recovery.

In line with Well-Safe’s ability to offer a fully-integrated, Tier 1 well plug and abandonment service, Control Cutter was contacted to look into optimizing the conductor recovery scope.

Once the executing Jack-up rig was contracted, a site survey was conducted and plan for utilizing the DecomCutter and DecomDart was developed between Control Cutter, Rig Contractor and WellSafe to ensure a safe and efficient operation.

Challenges

To optimize footprint of equipment, a frame and base was manufactured to enable stacking equipment on top of eachother. The system is remotely operated, including the fully integrated skidding functionality for both tools which eliminates the need for any manual handling in between and significantly reduce the time spent in redzone.

Once the equipment was rigged up all 9 wells were sectioned into 54 pieces in 11 days, including some waiting on weather and operational challenges. The operation was executed by a Control Cutter crew consisting of 4 technicians with excellent assistance from the rig crew.

Most of the pinning operations were carried out in less than four minutes while all cuts was done in five minutes on this heavy wall thickness configuration.