Decommissioning - Ongoing Product Development

March 23, 2011 - PRLog -- The Wellhead Recovery Tool provides a firm positive hold to a slick outside diameter of piping, or well conductor housing.

The immediate advantage of this tool is that it will allow full bore access to the internal pipe or housing maintenance once installed. In conjunction with this, the Subsea Wellhead Recovery Tool (http://www.claxtonengineering.com/Products/Product/Subsea-Wellhead-Recovery-Tool-97/) can easily be equipped with a secure landing shoulder to ensure land out on a specific reference or datum point.

In addition to the tool’s adaptability which enables it to be customised with an internal slip grip insert, it can now be used to suit a large range of diameters as needed. Once locked into the necessary pipe, this superb tool has been noted as having successfully pulled up to an impressive 100 tonnes SWL. Being able to withstand typical hydrostatic forces when used in conjunction with explosives required for wellhead severance, this exceptional piece of equipment is only testament to this field-proven design team who uphold considerable abandonment experience.

In association with this tool, over 100 suspended subsea wells in the North Sea have been abandoned for a variety of customers. These category 2 wells all required the use of a shallow cement plug spanning all the casing annuli and as a result have led to the creation of a multi-award winning Suspended Well Abandonment Tool - otherwise known as SWAT. (http://www.claxtonengineering.com/Products/Product/Suspen...)

SWAT is run from the back of vessels or through a moonpool, placed on the wellhead and then used to carry out casing perforation and placement of the required cement plugs within the well. This wellhead is usually then severed using SABRE abrasive cutting tool and recovered via the aforementioned wellhead recovery tool.

The multiple benefits that occur when using SWAT include the complete removal of any need for a drilling rig and swift deployment as part of a total suspended subsea well abandonment package. This excellent tool, being the first of its kind, currently holds both the Queen’s award for Innovation in the UK and the renowned Petroleum Institute Platinum Award for Innovation.

Considering the increasing number of North Sea fields approaching the end of their valuable economic lives, ever-rising numbers of operators are having to take on decommissioning projects(http://www.claxtonengineering.com/Products/Product/Well-A...). Therefore, rig less well decommissioning is considered a key cost saving initiative, despite involving some technical challenges that can occur due to the absence of a rig.

The ongoing success in this market has justified the recurrent development of brand new Claxton equipment, such as the tools described above, alongside a mixture of both conventional and fresh techniques.

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Claxton, an Acteon company, is the leading supplier of engineering and services for shallow water, jackup depth markets. The company draws on over two decades of industry experience to provide services for well systems, structures and pipelines across the lifetime of the field – from pre-drilling to drilling, production and decommissioning. Claxton provides first-class tailored engineering and holds a large “on-call” rental inventory. A hallmark of Claxton is the responsive service that, alongside numerous field-proven innovations, has built the company an enviable reputation.