CEO of HydraWell, Mark Sørheim (photo: HydraWell)

Plug and abandonment specialists HydraWell target the oil and gas market with another cost-saving solution: plugging offshore wells without the support of a drilling rig.

Several years ago, HydraWell introduced a technology more or less revolutionised the market for plugging and abandoning offshore wells. The company’s PWC® technology (perforate, wash and cement) promised to plug offshore wells in 2-3 days instead of the 10-14 days it took with traditional plugging methods such as section milling.

Since then, 15 operators – including supermajors, big, national and independent oil companies – have accepted and utilised HydraWell’s PWC® technology to plug more than 200 wells worldwide.

“This has resulted in approximately 1,500 fewer rig days for the oil companies in question, plus significantly smaller environmental footprint as they don’t have to bring the well’s swarf cuttings topside. This typically amounts to four tonnes per well,” says Morten Myhre, chief technology officer at HydraWell.

Today, oil companies often have to upgrade the derrick on their platforms, or hire a jack-up that is connected to the production platform, in order to execute P&A operations. With rig rates at a couple of hundred thousand dollars per day, this is a costly operation.

The new proposed solution HydraWell has developed, enables plugging of wells from the production platform, without a conventional drilling rig, but by use of well intervention equipment such as coil tubing, wireline or e-line. Performing this type of P&A work, without a drilling rig, will significantly reduce costs and environmental footprint for both oil companies and society as a whole.

Another advantage with HydraWell’s third generation solution is that the well can be plugged without having to pull thousands of metres of production piping out of the well. This will save costs and the environment further as you eliminate the need for heavy lift vessels, transport of material onshore, demolition and recycling of the materials from the well.

“The solution is ready. We will now enter into dialogue with oil companies to further develop it and start testing it offshore. Our experience is that oil companies are very open minded when it comes to cost efficient plugging methods, and we strongly believe that they are interested in exploring this solution too from HydraWell,” says Mark Sørheim, CEO of HydraWell.

HydraWell’s headquarter is based in Stavanger, Norway. The company also has offices in Aberdeen, UK, and in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

HydraWell is owned by the company’s management and employees together with private equity-fund Norvestor VII, L.P., which is advised by private equity-company Norvestor Equity AS.