First Usage of an Effective Device for Landing the Production Tubing in Subsea/Deep Water Wells in Malaysia

摘要

Spacing out production tubing and landing the tubing hanger in subsea completions is particularlyrnchallenging in wells with extreme well depths or in highly deviated well bores, as rig heave canrnsignificantly challenge space-out operations. Another problem also can occur when attempting to enter therncasing at the subsea blowout preventer (BOP) in deep water, since the subsea currents can initiate arnbending motion to the riser, causing the bottom of the completion to enter the subsea blowout preventerrn(BOP) at an angle. If the angle is too high, set-down weight or compression must be applied to push therncompletion through, placing shearable travel joints at risk of prematurely shearing. Even after pushing therntravel joint through the subsea BOP, the completion design must manage friction induced by wellrndeviations or ‘S’ curve well bores. Also, the travel joint must remain rigid enough to land seals intornproduction packers at the formation. Often, these challenging scenarios with high angles can be furtherrncomplicated by limited available slack-off weight. This paper will discuss how the development of newrntravel-joint designs were capable of resolving challenges such as those mentioned above that werernencountered on the the first deepwater subsea development for an operator in Malaysia. This was also thernfirst entirely deepwater subsea development in Malaysia, and at the time of the commencement of itsrndevelopment, an average production of 135,000 barrels per day of hydrocarbon was expected from thernproject.rnTo address the completion obstacles discussed above, a service/engineering company developed a long,rnspace-out travel joint (LSOTJ) designed to telescope downward in response to a timed application of arncompressive load rather than a shearing event as in standard designs. The LSOTJ slowly scopes downwardrnduring lowering of the production tubing until the hanger is landed. Equipment development wasrncomprised of two versions of the long space-out travel joint; one version is a non-continuous sealingrn(NCS-LSOTJ) version, and the other is a continuous sealing (CS-LSOTJ) versionrnThis paper will discuss the design and development of the two LSOTJ versions, and the first usage ofrnthe continuous sealing version in Malaysia, which was also its first usage world-wide.