Oil & Gas UK Economic Report 2014

Well Interventions

The decline in PE directly translates into an overall decline in production, which has more than halved over the past ten years, from 3.62 mboepd in 2004 to 1.44 mboepd in 2013 (see Figure 35 on the previous page). If successful, restoring PE to 80 per cent would increase production by about 0.5 mboepd over the course of a year. Better management of summer shutdowns, when major maintenance and construction to bring new production on-stream are undertaken, is seen as one of the principal ways of improving production efficiency. Another is to improve the effectiveness of the offshore workforce – so-called ‘wrench time’, or the proportion of hours spent on productive work by reducing unplanned compressor outages and coordinating planned maintenance schedules across assets with shared infrastructure. Unplanned losses also cause poor PE; these have been categorised and are being analysed to determine whether there are any common features across the industry. The importance of infrastructure has been recognised by the task force. Many UKCS fields rely on production hubs or pipeline systems operated by others to allow the export of their oil and gas. Low performance at these hubs or systems has a knock-on effect, compounding poor performance.

Well interventions play an important part in achieving maximum production from existing fields. The Well Intervention Excellence Network was set up in 2011 to raise the profile of well interventions and share experiences amongst operators, so that benchmarking can drive an improvement in performance. The network hosts an annual European benchmarking and technical workshop where benchmarking results are shared. The workshop also presents an opportunity for members to compare their experiences of the previous year’s well interventions. In May 2014, Oil & Gas UK held the fourth such workshop with increased participation from operators.

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ECONOMIC REPORT 2014