Study Identifies Opportunities for Intervention Improvement With Collaborative Workflows
Authors: Carpenter Chris 
Published: April 2024

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This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 212922, “The Intervention Opportunity: Why the Industry Does Not Do More and How New Collaborative Workflows With Aligned Outcomes Can Change This,” by Matthew E. Billingham, SPE, SLB; Fraser J. Proud, North Sea Transition Authority; and Pierre Ramondenc, SPE, SLB. The paper has not been peer reviewed.

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The authors write that their analysis presented in the complete paper challenges the typical way interventions have been planned and executed, both from an operational and commercial basis, and examines where room exists for significant improvement. The paper examines the case for performing interventions and aims to identify opportunities for both financial and net-zero-goal achievement. By appreciating the issues operators face when justifying and designing intervention activity, challenges can thus be addressed by proper alignment for the best outcome.

The Complexity of Interventions

Downhole issues can be broken into two main categories: reservoir-based bottlenecks, and well-integrity and completion hardware issues. Problems categorized as reservoir-based can manifest either in the formation or in the wellbore. For instance, scaling and sand production are processes that originate from the reservoir but must be dealt with at least partially in the wellbore. The same is true for downhole flow-assurance challenges, which often find their root cause in the reservoir.

The Value of Intervention

In the UK, operators complete an annual stewardship survey (also known as the UKSS) for which a large amount of data is collected, especially around wells. The average production added from many subsea intervention jobs is significant, with reperforations, for example, adding approximately 120,000 BOE/yr per intervention, a more than 300-BOEPD uplift. Clearly, opportunities exist to increase production in the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS). The question becomes whether the investment in intervention is economical.

Not all operators use well interventions to their maximum potential. A large variance exists in the number of jobs an operator completes; the operators seeing the most production added generally are the ones performing the most interventions.

Many operators may be capital-constrained and, thus, cannot invest in more well intervention. However, it is clear that operators that do invest consistently see good value returns.

Intervention Challenges

Platform/Wellsite Access. A major obstacle to performing interventions is the logistical bottleneck created by additional persons on board (POB) and deck-space limitations. This applies to operations on land as well, where lack of facilities, especially in remote locations, may cause similar bottlenecks.

Asset Mindset. Another difficulty is sometimes referred to as the “asset mindset,” whereby the asset-management team might regard interventions as a high-risk operation, which jeopardizes the existing production base as opposed to gaining a potential uplift. The asset mindset looks at the intervention not so much as a chance to increase production, but as a potential risk to lose base-case existing production. However, technology leaps have been made in the provision of intervention services to ensure safe entry and exit of wells, with zero damage to the completion or formation, and provide excellent chances of a production increase.