subsea completions

SenTree 7 equipment on the deck of the DP

drillship Discoverer Enterprise.

Nile recently found its way into

the industry annals as the
US Gulf of Mexico's first
deepwater completion from a
dynamically positioned vessel.
Before the event disappears
under today's virtual tidal
wave of deepwater firsts,
Rick von Flatern examines
its particular significance for
the industry and looks back
over the five years of
technology-stretching that
went into its making.

Gulf team delivers

on DP drillship promise
A
s early as 1996, Amoco engineers
had determined they were going to
complete a subsea well in the Gulf
of Mexico from a dynamically positioned
vessel. Last March, using the Transocean
Sedco Forex dual activity drillship
Discoverer Enterprise they did just that on
their Nile well in the 3500ft waters of the
Viosca Knoll 914 area of the Gulf. A few
weeks
later
they
repeated
the
performance at their King well 15 miles
away in Mississippi Canyon Block 85 in a
GOM record water depth of 5317ft.
While the Nile well was the first subsea
completion from a DP vessel in the Gulf,
it was not a worlds first. Petrobras and
others have done several. But the
accomplishment is noteworthy not just as
a first, but for having been done under
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extreme operating constraints which

engineers at Amoco and then BP had
placed upon themselves in the name of
safety and environmental protection.
Indeed, the parameters were so rigorous
at the time they were set they were
technologically unachievable.
The basic philosophy of the company
is that if you have a drift off or drive off
of a DP ship you will maintain a
competent system all the way through the
tree and the BOP stack. So you have to
put the weak point above that, says
Rodney Hensley, head of BPs wells
delivery team, who has led the effort from
inception. We took the worst case for
whatever reason nobody was able to push
any buttons or do anything and asked
what is going to happen. And through all

the analyses we know that the

intermediate flex joint is the weak point.
BP designed a spool horizontal tree to
withstand all the loadings down to the
conductor casing and then had Cameron
construct a deepwater, high-strength,
high-capacity wellhead profile and
connector that could withstand the
bending moments associated with their
worst case scenario.
The Dril-Quip subsea wellhead was
also redesigned to meet the design loads
and the size and capacity of the lowpressure housing and the high-pressure
housing increased to match, adds
Hensley. It had to be a system all the way
down. They were all new designs that
have become a standard at BP and are all
2
DP compatible.

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subsea completions

But if someone were to push a button,

that is if the drive off or float off were
under control while the completion was
being flowed, BP mandated a disconnect
system that would secure the well in less
than one minute. In 1997, as the
Discoverer Enterprise was beginning to
take shape, no such system existed.
BP engineers did the technical analyses
and set the technical loads that the new
tree systems would have to meet. They
also, according to Hensley, set such basic
tree functions as how fast it must operate
and number and size of ball valves.
Everything then was controlled
hydraulically, recalls Schlumberger
senior sales engineer Michael Frug, who
has been dedicated to the project since
1999 and offices at BPs campus-like
complex on the western edge of Houston.
Depending on the water depth you have
two to three minutes actuation time
(using hydraulics control systems). That
is fine with a moored vessel but taking it

to the next step where you have to do it all

in 15 seconds required a whole new
control system not previously available.
At about the time BP was seeking to
drastically reduce subsea disconnect
time, Schlumberger had begun work on
what was to become its SenTREE subsea
completion and test tree. Having been
involved in subsea hydraulics since the
1970s, the SenTREE series became viable
within a relatively short time after
inception. But decreasing the time
between when a command is initiated on
the drilling vessel and the operation of
the specific function at the tree several
thousand feet away on the seafloor to 15
seconds required what Frug terms a
revolutionary step.
That 15 seconds is not just to
disconnect the subsea test tree, says
Schlumberger senior engineer David
Harrison, emphasizing the complexity of
the task. That is to shut in the well, close
off the landing string, bleed off pressure

We built this ship for this

project says BP wells delivery
team leader Rodney Hensley of
Discoverer Enterprise, pictured
here preparing for sea trials two
years ago (OE August 1999).

between two valves and unlatch. The 15second window was determined as the
amount of time the test tree had to
accomplish its part of the disconnecting
operation in order for the rig to then
disconnect the BOP stack and still be free
of the well in 35-40 seconds.
Since the lag time in hydraulic systems
is due to the time it takes pressure applied
to one end of a long fluid-filled hose to
affect a valve or other component on the
other end, the solution was to transmit
and monitor commands via electronic
signals. The final multiplex version of the
control system for the SenTREE 7 was
qualified and accepted by BP in May 2000.
The heart of the solution, dubbed the
Commander Telemetry control and
monitoring system, is a multiplex (MUX)
system that permits signals to travel
downward from the drilling unit to the
well and information to travel back from
the well to the surface.
The electronics control all the
hydraulic functions including the tubing
hanger running tool, opening and closing
all the valves and the pressure and
temperature monitors, Frug explains.
Since BP is utilizing horizontal trees we
can run the completion with the tree
already set and have full monitoring
capability of all the functions.
Besides assuring quick disconnect
actions at the wellhead, the MUX system
offers some collateral advantages as well.
With all-hydraulic systems, for instance,
each function must have its own
hydraulic line, a requirement that
quickly leads to large, unwieldy
umbilicals. Electro-hydraulic systems on
the other hand require only a single
electrical line and one hydraulic line to
perform up to 22 functions.
But most importantly, when signaled to
do so, the new subsea test tree completes
its part of the disconnect function in less
than 15 seconds and that, according to
Frug, has significant implications not
only for BPs ambitions, but for
deepwater development in general.
With the success of the SenTREE 7 and
Commander telemetry system it is
proven that subsea completions can be
done safely from a DP vessel, he
concludes. It allows us to go into deeper
water because we are getting to the depth
limitations of moored vessels. In water
depths of much over 5500ft mooring
becomes very difficult and expensive.

Perf-and-surge
The Nile well was drilled and cased and
then temporarily abandoned for two
years with completion fluid left across
the formation and a bridge plug just
below the mud line. As a precaution
against possible drilling or completion
fluid damage, completion engineers chose
to
perforate
the
well
slightly
underbalanced and to then clean the
formation by surging the well
3
immediately after it was perforated.

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subsea completions

The Schlumberger team

prepares Commander module
for Nile completion.

Again, the task was made more

complex by BPs suspender-and-belt
safety requirements. What BP asked us
to do was come up with a perforatingsurge technique so that the entire time
they were perforating and surging the
well we could do it with the downhole ball
valve closed, says Frug. That way, if
they did have a drive off during that
operation and were in a hurry to get off
location and had to close [rams] and
shear, a valve would be closed just above
the formation.
Also, there was some concern the
wellbore was out of gage from possible
wash out during drilling. That, combined
with BPs expectations of high flow rates,
required Schlumberger to develop a new
charge that could both penetrate deep
enough to get past a thick cement sheath
and at the same time create a largediameter hole through the casing.
The test work string contained a
number of IRIS Dual Valves which are
coded to operate on a unique pressure
impulse, meaning one valve can be
opened or closed without interfering with
any other valve in the string. As the
perforating guns were run into the hole,
atmospheric pressure was trapped
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between the lower valve just above the

guns while kill weight fluid was trapped
above the second valve placed in the work
string about 3000ft up hole. Prior to
perforating both valves were closed and
only a slight underbalance existed across
the formation.
The
way
we
established
an
underbalance was to displace the choke
and kill line on the rig with lighter
seawater to reduce the hydrostatic
pressure on the formation by about 200
lbs, says Frug. So once we have that
underbalanced condition, we set the
packer and trap the lower hydrostatic
below it with kill weight completion fluid
above should worse come to worse.
Once it was determined the guns had
fired, a lower valve was opened. Due to a
pressure differential equivalent to about
7600psi, the formation surged into the
atmospheric chamber, filling it with mud,
sand and other debris. It was a mixture
BP was reluctant to flow to the surface at
any time while there existed a potential
for loss of station.
[BP] said the only way to flow to the
ship was to have the formation isolated,
explains Frug. So we then sent a
command to close the lower IRIS valve

and the formation is isolated. Another

command opens the upper valve and
another opens a circulating valve and we
then can circulate out all this stuff while
every step of the way having full well
control.
Included in the work string was an
electronic cable latched into the top valve
that permitted real time pressure
monitoring at the surface. Because the
gages are reading in different places
throughout the workstring we could
witness all the pressure changes in real
time, explains Frug. This is important
because we wanted to be 100% sure
everything was under control before we
started to bring hydrocarbon and debris
to the surface. If we had not been able to
offer this assurance to BP they would
have had to bullhead all that debris back
into the formation which would have
greatly reduced completion efficiency
even if you ever did clean it up. Besides
increasing production efficiency, Frug
observes, this one-trip technique saved
BP more than $500,000 in rig time costs.
The well was fractured after a gravel
pack assembly was put in the hole in
order to improve conductivity. But having
gone that far to assure a clean and

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subsea completions

Hensley. We have been with it since its

inception in 1995. We, with (rig manager)
Larry McMahan and his team at
Transocean Sedco Forex built this ship to
be doing what it is doing right now.
Among the features made possible by
the Enterprises immense deck space is a
facility designed to allow wells to clean
up at production rates so that no
damaging fluids need be left on the
formation once the completion has been
installed. That is particularly important
in subsea development wells that may
have to wait months for a flow line to be
hooked up to a host facility.
But the real time-saver according to
Hensley and McMahon is the rigs dual
activity capability. With two complete rig
floors and derricks, operations that once
had to be run successively can now be
run concurrently. In that way, at least
some major operations are being
completed in as much as half the time it
would take on a standard unit. And as
total expense to run a deepwater floater is
about $350,000/d, a few days saved quickly
builds into millions of dollars over the
full span of a drilling and completion
operation.
We ran a full SIT (systems integration
test) on the (Nile) subsea tree in open
water while we were drilling the Crazy
Horse well, points out Hensley as one
example of how his crews leveraged the
value of the Enterprises dual activity
capability. You cant get a hyperbaric
chamber large enough to test a tree that
size so we ran the tree to 6500ft when the
aft rotary became available.
In the deepwater we can eliminate a lot
of the flat spots on the drilling curve,
says McMahon, referring to times when
actual drilling must be halted while the
crew uses the rotary for other timeconsuming activities. For instance we
can be setting the conductor pipe at the
same time we are running the BOPs to
the seafloor. Then when the conductor is
in place we just move over and lower the
BOP onto it.
Also, because they can run the spool
tree with the drill pipe off the aft rotary,
BP has discovered it need not invest the
several weeks it takes to pull the drilling
riser. On recent wells the company has
been conducting post-drilling operations
on the drilling riser from one rotary
while landing, testing and locking down
the subsea production test tree on the
other. The company has even taken to
mobilizing between jobs without pulling
the riser. After completing the Nile well
the Enterprise moved 15 miles to the King
well and then six miles to the completion
job currently under way with the drilling
riser fully deployed.

efficient formation, the last thing anyone

wanted was fluid loss into the formation.
To prevent that a formation isolation
valve was run with the gravel pack
assembly.
The formation isolation valve is just
above the gravel pack assembly, Frug
says. When the wash pipe is pulled out a
latching mechanism closes the valve and
you then have a fully stimulated
formation that is isolated as you pull out
of the hole so there is no possibility of
fluid loss.
The isolation valve also served another
purpose when it was decided to re-stress
the fracture. Since it opens and closes
mechanically with a shifting tool, BP was
able to re-enter the well without having to
first kill the well, risk formation damage
and greatly extend clean up time. Then,
once the completion was landed and the
well ready for production, the isolation
valve was opened by pressure cycles from
an underbalanced condition.
I think we are getting good skin
numbers on these completions because
we are very careful about getting clean
completion fluids through filtering and
then surging the wells underbalanced
during perforating, says BPs Hensley.
The Nile frac-pack went very well and we
had a net pressure increase of 750psi.
Nile is currently producing at 70
million cubic feet of gas and about 9000
barrels of condensate per day and as such
is in this years BP top ten list of most
efficient producers worldwide

Built to complete
When plans were first announced for the
building of huge DP drillships like the
Discoverer Enterprise, some early
promoters claimed they would reduce rig
time by as much as 40%. Whether that
level of efficiency will become standard
remains to be seen and some observers
remain skeptical. But the success of the
Nile completion job is proof to some that
these claims were not overblown.
Our beyond the best target for this
kind of completion job four years down
the road was 38 days from move in to
move out, recalls Hensley, referring to
BPs yardstick of operations efficiency.
Our first well out of the box (the Nile) we
did in 44 days, which is very close
considering all the new technologies we
employed.
The second well, King, was completed
in just 28 days, ten days under a target BP
thought would take another four years to
achieve. So confident is the Enterprise
team in the ship and their ability to build
on what it has already learned that they
have reset the Enterprises beyond the
best completion time target to 21 days.
Much of the credit for these efficiencies,
Hensley believes, is owing to the fact that
five years ago engineers were designing
and building the vessel with just this
kind of work in mind.
We built this ship for this project, says
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Personnel and merger affects

At the time of the Enterprises keellaying, Transocean and Sedco Forex were
separate entities. And the five-year
contract under which BP and the

june 2001

Enterprise are currently working was

signed with Amoco. But other than a
delay while the BP-Amoco merger was
being implemented, the project moved
ahead essentially in the manner in which
it was first designed and may hold lessons
for an industry constantly at the mercy of
mergers and acquisitions.
My team has stayed intact, says
Hensley who came from the Amoco side
of the merger. The team has grown but I
have had people working in my team
since 1996. The project had been set to go
forward at the time of the merger so we
decided to slow that down and re-look at
it until the companies had the time to
come together.
The setback lasted a year while exAmoco engineers acquainted themselves
with all the issues involved in a BP
completion, he says. Technically there
were no differences between the [Amoco
and BP completion] teams.
The new BP team then went through
two extensive hazardous operations
exercises to break the whole sequence of
planned events into their smallest
components in order to determine all
possible what if scenarios. These
exercises were facilitated by DNV,
certifying authority for the Enterprise.
For its part, Schlumberger says the fact
that it was able to bring several new
technologies and processes to the table
essentially without a hitch is also due in
large measure to personnel. There are a
group of people built into this
Commander system contract that have
worked this system from day one, says
Harrison. Some people from the clean up
facility to the perforating to the
Command system were there all the way
and had a lot to do with how smoothly
everything went.

Onward and outward

With two subsea wells now completed
from an untethered floater and operating
procedures, equipment and standards
being honed and polished, BP is moving
to deeper water. The fourth completion on
the list at Kings Peak will be in about
6300ft of water. World water depth
records will likely be set there as some
Kings Peak wells will be located in waters
up to 6975ft.
The second and third wells are the first
to have subsea production control panels
fitted with fiber optics while the fourth
well will also be a smart well with
hydraulically operated sleeves to open
and close zones.
Others in the industry have been
carefully watching the Kings Peak action
and have expressed interest in the
SenTree 7 test trees and the Commander
systems that enable quick disconnecting
DP subsea completions. BP now has two
under contract but the next ones have
been purchased by TotalFinaElf and
Marathon, reportedly for completions in
waters beyond 7000ft. OE
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