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Devon tests new Arctic well kill system, blowout preventer could extend drilling season
Gary Park Petroleum News Calgary correspondent
Along with entering the regulatory phase of its plans to reactivate exploration of Canada’s Beaufort Sea, Devon Canada is working on new technology that could both reduce the risks and extend the drilling season in the Arctic.
The company has contracted with a Houston-based firm to build and test what it calls a second-generation BOP (blowout preventer) that it hopes it can convince Canada’s National Energy Board is the equivalent to a relief well.
Beaufort project leaders at Devon Canada told Petroleum News in a recent interview that the Alternate Well Kill system, if successful, could apply to drilling operations anywhere in the world.
Known as a Super, Shear & Seal BOP, the technology could stretch the Beaufort drilling season to 160 days from the usual 60 to 120 days available in the winter season and be employed on steel drilling caisson or landfast tender-assist drill units. Well bore sealed with the touch of a button Brian Kergan, Devon Canada’s manager of frontiers development, said the BOP “allows us to close and seal the well bore” with the touch of a button and prevent any fluids escaping from the well.
The Canadian government requires drillers in the Beaufort to have “same-season relief well capability,” which means a blowout must be killed in the same season to prevent any spills when the ice melts.
However, in the process of further tightening the drilling season by 40 to 60 days, the National Energy Board said it would accept an equivalent to a relief well.
Kergan said regulatory agencies will be invited to a test of the BOP in Houston later this year. Three drilling platforms being considered In an April filing with the National Energy Board, the company said it is considering three optional drilling platforms, none of which requires dredging support.
• Steel drilling caisson — A former crude oil tanker converted into a certified mobile Arctic platform and which has previously been used to successfully drill exploration wells in the Beaufort.
• Land-fast tender-assist drill unit — An engineered concept that, if constructed, would consist of an ice-strengthened steel caisson set directly on the sea floor and used as an operating base to construct a grounded ice pad. Once the pad is completed, a land rig stored on the LTD would be lowered to the ice to drill the well. The LTD would be custom-built and towed into the Beaufort.
• Ice island — A constructed, grounded ice pad used as a drilling platform. Equipment and materials would be transported by barge during the open-water season to a staging area, then delivered to the drill site during the winter by ice road.
The steel drilling caisson – i.e. SDC – is the same drillship that a consortium of oil companies and the state of Alaska is looking at using to drill a stratigraphic test well in late 2004 offshore the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in state waters. (See Petroleum News story archives at www.PetroleumNews.com for more information.)
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