Claxton scores Southern North Sea combined services deal

Claxton, an engineering and services company in subsea services group Acteon, has been awarded a contract for rigless casing cutting and recovery of seven wells in the Southern North Sea.

Claxton said that the company would work for an undisclosed North Sea operator on unmanned platforms and an additional subsea suspended well.

Work is scheduled to begin in July at the first location, located around 180km off the Yorkshire coast, with work on the second platform, in the Dowsing Fault Zone of the Sothern North Sea, beginning shortly afterward. The combined project length is expected to be around 100 days.

The first NUI scope of work includes the removal of Christmas trees in preparation for the removal of the production tubing, wellhead preparation in readiness to also undertake the sub-mudline multi-conductor/ casing cutting and recovery, and severance and conductor recovery of the suspended subsea well.

Due to limited deck space, work will be conducted as a combined operation using a jack-up lift barge “Julb” and without the use of a drilling rig.

Laura Claxton, managing director of Claxton, said: “We will be using a 150-tonne hydraulic proving jack package, Claxton Double Drilling Units (DDUs) for drilling and pinning and rapid cut bandsaws for cutting the combined multi strings.”

The scope of work on the second platform includes Christmas tree and tubing removal, the supply of blowout preventer (BoP) equipment, and the use of coiled tubing for cement squeezing operations.

Tubing and conductor severance and recovery will be performed using Claxton’s own SABRE abrasive cutting system – 10 feet below the seabed.

Laura Claxton continued: “We have also provided an engineered and aligned solution to reduce the number of slewing operations required by the “Julb” crane with a revision to our existing tubing laydown frame by incorporating a traveling bogie system. The frame and bogie eliminates the need for the crane to slew from the well center while still allowing tubing to be laid out on deck. This saves valuable time on a project.”