The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Total taking big interest in Footdee firm’ s tool
Decom: Energy giant eyes up savings
French energy giant Total has said a new tool developed in Aberdeen represents a “significant opportunity” to slash its £11.6 billion global decommissioning bill.
Deep Casing Tools (DCT) has been backed by the operator and the Oil and Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) to develop the new system, which is said to significantly reduce the amount of time taken to plug and abandon (P&A) offshore wells.
P&A is a major expense in the decommissioning process, and expected to make up roughly half of the UK North Sea’s total £15bn spend to 2027, according to industry body Oil and Gas UK.
Mirroring that, Total said about half of its own £11.6bn global cost would be in plugging and abandonment, with a “significant proportion” in the North Sea. These costs are driven by the need to hire expensive mobile rigs, with heavy lift equipment to pull out part of the well structure.
But the new tool – the Casing Cement Breaker – is expected to save “millions if not tens of millions” of pounds per job.
Alex Lucas, lead well engineer with Total, said: “It’s anything from one or two days to cutting the time in half for what is typically an extremely costly operation.
“For us at Total, globally if you look at our balance sheet we have an asset retirement figure of multiple billions of dollars – it is publicly reported about $14.3bn (£11.6bn), according to the latest company statement.
“About half of that comes from the plug and abandonment of wells and, of that, a significant proportion is in the North Sea. Any new ideas like this obviously will have our interest at Total.”
The system will be trialled on wells at Total’s Alwyn and Franklin fields in the first quarter of next year, with the aim of it being fully commercial by the end of 2020.
DCT, based in Footdee, saw its revenue fall steeply amid the last oil downturn and it is hoped the new technology could be “transformational” for its fortunes. Chief executive David Stephenson said: “Like most small technology companies, we’ve been through a very hard time over the last four or five years. Our revenue has dropped by 70-80%.
“Over the last 18 months or so we’ve increased the revenue four or five-fold, not including anything from this technology. We could very easily double our
“Any new ideas like this obviously will have our interest at Total”
business’ revenue year-onyear going forward.”
DCT employs 20 people, the majority of whom are in Aberdeen, but the size of the business is expected to “multiply”. Total sees potential to use the technology in West Africa, Denmark and the Netherlands in the next three to five years, along with Argentina and Abu Dhabi. Mr Stephenson said forging partnerships with “end-users” was key, facilitated by the OGTC, in a growing market for the technology. He added: “We know the P&A and slot recovery market has been on the up, principally kicked off by the drop in the oil price.
“It has come to the forefront of our industry and I believe it will continue to do so, certainly through my career and probably the next generation.”
OGTC wells solutions centre project engineer Sarah Kirkwood said the DCT system met one of OGTC’s key goals of optimising well abandonment. She added: “By supporting DCT’s development of their casing recovery system, we can introduce innovative technology to the North Sea, reducing abandonment costs through efficient removal operations as well as providing an opportunity to improve the economics of slot recovery.”