Claxton Engineering Services Ltd. celebrated the 10th anniversary of its success with the world’s first rigless platform well abandonment.
For the project, the company used a custom conductor reaction recovery system—designed and manufactured to interface with the Leman platform and to retrieve and handle well trees and tubulars.. The Sabre™ abrasive water jet cutting system played a key role and has since been used on many significant abandonment campaigns.
When the Leman Abandonment was completed, calculations showed that the overall cost of the project, as conducted by Claxton and Acteon sister company, InterAct, was less than 50% of an equivalent rig-based solution. The Perenco Well A1 proved to be a game-changer with the introduction of pioneering technical solutions that have since become commonplace.
“A strong track record is important, but we are looking to the future,” Laura Claxton, managing director, Claxton said. “We have ambitious plans for growing our decommissioning capabilities to meet the needs of our clients. For instance, enhancements to our SWAT™ suspended well abandonment tool and the SABRE™ abrasive water jet cutting system will enable us to cut and abandon deeper wells. At the same time, we anticipate a significant increase in equipment spread and offshore crew numbers that will widen both our service capacity and our footprint.”
Since the company’s successful well abandonment project, it has become one of the North Sea’s top riser supplier, and has launched a range of product, process and running tool innovations. The company has also been involved in decommissioning more than 60 North Sea platform wells, in most cases without using a drilling rig or lift vessel. In total, the Claxton decommissioning tooling spread has been used on more than 260 well abandonment and conductor removal projects.