SPDC Delivers 1st Onshore Smartwell Through Constructive Engagement with Stakeholders (Partners/Regulators/Internal SPDC)

摘要

Smartwell has become a routine technology solution in various parts of the world (including Nigeria) but is yet to receive total acceptance in Nigeria as the Industry regulators have remained opposed to commingled production pending demonstrable evidence of production allocation to individual producing reserves. It is still a frontier project in Nigeria and therefore requires a dedicated and concerted approach of winning stakeholders’ acceptance. Various challenges, ranging from risk aversion to fears of a repeat first attempt ‘partial success’ experience, contributed to the current low (near zero) performance of Shell Nigeria in the Nigerian Smart Completion deployment hierarchy. Notably, Chevron is the industry leader in Nigeria with over 22 wells while Shell Nigeria is about the last with only one attempt. The single ‘failed’ attempt of the technology in 2002 gave rise, in 2004, to a deployment strategy change which met with an opposition both internally and externally. Undeterred by the challenge of persuading all stakeholders to embrace a repeat trial, work continued assiduously towards ensuring that the technology benefits are fully harnessed/realized through an aggressive and transparent approach of constructive stakeholders’ engagements, development of pragmatic contracts and detailed researches into best practices. This paper presents a transparent and focused approach adopted through all stages of the project, which culminated in the final ‘textbook’ Smartwell deployment. It also outlines how stakeholders involvement in the Major Smartwell contract initiation and award coupled with a collective orchestration of deployment planning further enabled a hitch-free deployment. Notably, this paper buttresses how the quest for success assurance and building of stakeholders’ confidence, culminated into the constitution of a project deployment team comprising of operator, Partners, regulators and Contractors’ representatives. The project team was tasked with the responsibility of working collaboratively to ensure success of the deployment as it would enable the next FDP for the field.