Fluid engineering firm BHR Group has launched a commercially available, open-access downhole test facility, based in Cranfield, UK.
The onshore facility is the first of its kind in the UK, providing an easily-accessible, secure, flexible, onshore environment that accurately reproduces downhole conditions. The facility can be utilized for a variety of applications across a number of different sectors, and can be booked over six months in advance.
With the growing need for deepwater exploration and production (E&P) and future plans for ultra deep wells, the reliability of subsea and downhole equipment is of vital concern to the oil and gas sector. In hostile downhole environments, long service life is crucial for equipment that can be extremely costly to repair and maintain. Assuring reliability is crucial since intervention, where it’s possible for subsea equipment, frequently involves the mobilization of specialized technologies and often has a significant impact on production.
To minimize the risk of a costly well shut-in, greater emphasis is being placed on the reliability of subsea systems, and realistic downhole testing of subsea components is a critical part of product development, testing and approval.
BHR’s new facility – the latest addition to a range of different rigs and facilities – is fully fitted with CCTV that can be accessed via VPN, enabling round the clock monitoring. The facility’s instrumentation and the data generated can also be viewed over the VPN allowing remote, real-time access to data, by clients anywhere in the world. The downhole test facility is entirely customizable and able to be modified for specific technical requirements. Tests can be conducted to national, international or industry standards or to the client’s own test specification.
Dr Carl Wordsworth, senior consultant at BHR Group, commented: “This facility is set to be a game changer for many subsea equipment providers, whose customers are conducting deeper E&P than ever before, putting increasing pressure on the reliability of the products being used. The downhole test facility gives organizations independent data to prove their technologies and demonstrate the capability of their components and systems.”
The downhole test facility can be utilized by organizations for product development and qualification testing of downhole equipment, such as:
With the capacity to achieve 40bar at the base of the well, BHR’s facility can simulate a 400m fluid depth with representative well conditions for development, performance and reliability testing of components and systems. It is able to test with a variety of fluids in single or multiphase flow at elevated pressure and temperature for extended durations. The facility incorporates accurate, high speed measurements of downhole pressure, temperature and flow, ensuring that product performance can be mapped under a range of conditions and providing a comprehensive equipment testing capability.