Wireline Issue 47 Spring 2020

"We were new kids on the block in terms of our business, but we’ve actually got the most experienced P&A team in the UK working for us."

Above: Visitors touring the Well-Safe Guardian during a week of rig visits. Below right: Well- Safe Solutions CEO Phil Milton leads a tour of the Guardian in February 2020.

very successful project in getting the rig ready to go to work on time and forecast to be under budget — which for a company of our age, having never owned an asset before, is a pretty amazing achievement.” He also believes that the experience held within the team will help set the business apart from those who look to offer similar services: “The amount of systems and processes and policies that you have to put in to run a business like this properly is a huge undertaking,” he says. With Well-Safe acting in various capacities as an asset owner, and operator, and a well engineering and project management company — in addition to logistics, waste stream and personnel management — he believes these foundations put the company ahead of potential competition. “I think we have been watched with interest,” he reflects. “We were new kids on the block in terms of our business, but we’ve actually got the most experienced P&A team in the UK working for us in terms of the amount of well experience, so although we are a new entity we are certainly not an inexperienced entity.” That team is being proven on its current projects, including contracts with Repsol Sinopec and a recent award to decommission up to 21 wells on the Schooner and Ketch fields in the UKCS, operated by DNONorth Sea. The Guardian, meanwhile, is set to be finished in April, ready for active duty. Well-Safe hopes it will be the first of many assets, with the potential addition of another semi-submersible and a jack during 2020 into early 2021.

The latter has been developed in collaboration with the Oil & Gas Technology Centre (OGTC) and will allow for riserless interventions. Final negotiations for the 14-month design and manufacture contract are ongoing, but delivery is slated for Q2 2021 onwards. With these pieces installed the Guardian becomes what Well-Safe describes as a “onemodule solution”— a drilling rig that can do conventional P&A operations but can also conduct riserless work usually limited to smaller, monohull vessels — with the added ability to deploy divers. “We can really reduce the amount of visits you would have to do to a well where conventionally you’d have to go with an LWIV, then a rig, then perhaps a construction vessel afterwards — effectively we can do all these scopes and visits required in a single visit with a single asset leading to considerable project savings due to a reduction in duration, savings on fuel leading to a reduction in environmental impact.” The first of many What, then, is the key to a successful refurbishment programme? Milton is thankful for no great surprises during the project so far, putting this down to a very thorough project plan to which the organisation and its supply chain partners have been able to adhere. He adds: “The plan we put in place treated this as a huge project, and the detail in that plan was excellent. Our operations, QHSE, HR, contracts and purchasing teams all worked together really well, and have delivered a

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