UK-based oilfield supplier Expro International Group has won a key contract with BP to develop and commercialise a “lightweight, sub-sea, wireline intervention system”, a move that creates a new player in the deepwater intervention market.

The deal gives Expro global exposure for its system, just as a new market emerges around clipping the cost of well-intervention. The expro well-intervention tool is deployable off the deck of a "low-spec" ship, an anchor-handler or via the moonpole of a specialized boat.

As well as eliminating the need to hire a rig, the system "reduces the risk of operating in various sea states", a source said.

"You're not having to move anything up or down bewteen the seabed and the ship because the tools are inside the system," a spokesperson told Scandoil.com, adding that only a control wire connected to the surface vessel.

Expro will build and deploy the AX-S, and BP will provide partial project funding and input, including field trials in 2009 on sub-sea wells “subject to the system passing agreed testing milestones”.

Once proven, the AX-S will be available to the whole industry, Expro heralded on Thursday.

A key factor will be the columnar tool's performance in deepwater, where a race is developing over lightweight intervention techniques. Expro’s system extends work depths to 10,000 feet (3,000 metres), “a significant technological breakthrough over what is possible today”, a statement said.

A number of other riserless, sub-sea tools are under development for specific tasks offshore Norway. Well intervention, however, is among the trickiest range of operations in deepwater and is understood to require ships with station-keeping thrusters.

FMC Kongsberg Subsea and Island Offshore have also pioneered a "boat-deliverable" intervention technique for use by StatoilHydro.

ws@scandoil.com

Tags: Expro Group International