Page 76: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Oct/Nov 2013)

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New frontiers:

Depth drives intervention

Growing numbers of subsea wells in increasingly deeper waters will continue to drive the market for well intervention capabilities. Infelds’ James Hearn outlines the market.

epleting oil and gas reserves within estab- This drive toward deeper waters has led to signif- lished shallow water areas and rising global cant new discoveries and has been one of the key energy demand over the past decade has led industry trends of recent years.

D to oil and gas operators pushing the boundaries of Infeld Systems forecasts that this deepwater trend exploration into ever deeper and more challenging is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, as the waters. industry expands into new frontier regions, such as

South and East Africa and the South China Sea.

The ever-increasing movement of offshore ac-

Figure 1 – Global well intervention tivities toward deeper waters has been driven by demand (vessel days) by water depth (m) technological advances, particularly in the subsea 10,000 production industry. 0-99 100-499 500-999 1000-1499 >1500 9,000

Subsea technology has helped unlock huge re- 8,000 serves of oil and gas, and reduced costs to develop deepwater felds. 7,000

There are more than 5,000 subsea wells in opera- 6,000 tion globally. Current growth in the number of subsea 5,000 wells being installed shows no sign of abating and helps to fuel the need for associated services, such 4,000 as subsea well intervention.

3,000

Well intervention remains an emerging market 2,000 and is not yet common practice in many regions, 1,000 with the exception of the North Sea and US Gulf of

Mexico. However, as the operational base of subsea 0 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 wells increases recovery rates from subsea wells are oedigital.com

OE | October 2013REVIEW 78 078_OE1013_OERinfield.indd 78 9/29/13 10:50 PM