Reinstating the Reliability and Integrity of Well HSE Critical Equipment – An Innovation to Enhance Well Life

Abstract Reinstating the Reliability and Integrity of certain Well HSE Critical Equipment (e.g. DHSV Control Lines, Wireline Nipples) has been a worldwide challenge since all prevailing sealants in the industry tend to plug these control lines after repair work. Hence, the conventional solution has been to Workover such wells. However, an in-depth collaborative work during last year proved to be ground-breaking in ensuring absolutely zero likelihood of control line plugging after successful repair (saving $ >60M, 6210 tons carbon emission and 405MB of Production loss). A task force was formed in UAE to ensure absolute minimum likelihood of Control Line Plugging after deploying repairing Sealants, who worked rigorously to successfully complete all required workshop/field trials for a newly developed product called Piston Sealant, which acts like a piston within Control line based on the principles of buoyancy and specific gravities. This can seal all leak paths in Wireline Nipples/Control Lines and also transmits hydraulic power (hence no chance of plugging). However, another challenge was how to stop Piston Sealant to move out of control line during bleed-off? This was overcome by successfully deploying a special Ingress Isolation System at Control Line which would ensure to maintain minimum positive pressure (~150 psi) within control line to avoid losing Piston Sealant during bleed-off (100% success rate so far). The initiative has been proved to be indispensable not only on financial terms but also provides carbon-neutral alternative, which conveys a clear focus on enhancing energy security across the industry while mitigating environmental impacts. Following were the major impacts as a result of implementing this initiative. Proven Financial Gains - There is huge commercial potential for this initiative since it is already field proven on 7 offshore wells (saving>$60 millions of planned workover cost) and same can be applied for decades to come across the Oil & Gas industry.Production Gain - Avoided at least 30 days of Production loss per well.Sustainable Rig-less Approach -(a) The initiative is a Rigless alternate solution to Workover. The innovative aspects of this initiative combined with its tangible results positioned it as a model that other organizations could adopt across the industry. This unique approach was trialed successfully for the first time at various fields in UAE and this would hopefully fulfil exiting gap in the Oil Field Industry that lacks any inventive international guidelines to resolve these Safety Critical Equipment operational problems in an energy efficient manner.