Holdfast Training Services Trial Blog

Weeks 14 and 15.  Shovel it my way please

The last fortnight has seen a good amount of progression on my existing jobs, a bunch more arrive on my desk, and a visit from the CI and SI.

New jobs

Mungo W160 Wellhead

This fortnight I’ve been getting to grips with the principals of getting oil out of the ground through a tube in a series of casings, sometimes within a caisson, and as with everything, everyone (Mon the project engineer, Abbas the petroleum engineer, and Gavin the drilling engineer) has a different idea of what we need to do.  But I’ve got it sorted.  The problem is that there’s a leak in the 10¾” casings around 2km below the sea bed, so a 7⁵/₈” casing is going inside the 10¾” casing and a new tube (4½” rather than 5½”) going inside that.  This requires a new spool (designed by Cameron) which means pipework modifications to the gas inlet (we pump gas back in between the casing and the tube to lift the oil out).  

So, after getting my head round the technical version of the above, I’m going to go out to Mungo (a Normally Unmanned Installation, or NUI) that ties back into ETAP, to do a cloud scan (think Batman’s phone) of the wellheads area so see exactly where everything is.  I’m then going to get the drawings of the new spool (pipe) that goes onto the wellhead and work out how the new gas lift supply lifts, how the control mechanisms change, how this affects the stresses on the wellhead and how we go about the execution of the project.

And when I say “I” and “we”, I mean that I’ll lead a team from WG PSN to do all this.

Magnus Bunkering Lines

So, after next year’s TAR and my previously mentioned Magnus tasks, a flotel will pull up alongside with 100+ beds for drilling season.  However, the place the flotel parks itself is slap-bang where the fuel oil and water resupply vessel would normally dock to.  So, I need to ensure that there is a system in place to allow the resupply vessel to dock to the flotel, the fuel oil and water to transit through, and then onto Magnus.

Problems here will include the sizes of the attachments, lengths of hoses, quick-release mechanisms, flow rates, a variation in flotel docking and stability mechanisms and the fact that should we need to modify the flotels or hoses, we need to get hold of them!  Drillfest starts in Sept 13.  The flotel for the first 6-months will be Prosafe’s Safe Caledonie (Currently in Gdansk, and then onto the Andrew platform), after which we have COSL’s Rival, which is with Conoco Philips, undergoing marine assurance right now.

I’ve met with a Dutch engineer who’s on BP’s Renewals team (he’s new to the offshore industry) and a Northerner from England who’s BP’s flotel expert.  I’m going to get some initial funding to have a kickoff meeting with WG PSN who will do the define and execute the modifications under my watchful hand. 

What the hell happened with Andrew’s oil metering prover???

(Note, Andrew is a platform, not a person).  For this project (yet to start) I’ll be working out why a £750k project of installing a metering prover ended up costing £3.3m, and looking like a dog’s dinner.  Perfect for critical analysis, I think, and maybe even a good TMR…

In other news

Liz and I met a whole new part of society we never knew existed at T in the Park last weekend

Liz has completely taken over as Adjt 39 so we’ll be seeing even less of each other during the week

The period of blazing sunshine I reported about in April – that was the summer

Roadworks really are sh*t when you’re commuting by car – currently adding a third hour of driving to my day

And London to Brighton is my next challenge – no, not the cycle ride or the mini rally…