OSRL, SWRP Improve Subsea Well Incident Preparedness and Response

Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL) and the Subsea Well Response Project (SWRP) revealed details of their collaboration to further develop existing subsea well response capability through the provision of a subsea well containment concept supplemented by a containment toolkit.

This concept, engineered into a template containment system, is described in the Subsea Well Containment Guidelines. It relies on standard readily available well test riser and surface equipment deployed offshore from a drilling rig to safely flow to surface, process and dispose of well hydrocarbons. The containment toolkit comprises equipment that is not currently available in the industry at short notice.

Containment capability is designed to complement a subsea well incident response in scenarios where capping alone is not sufficient to stem the flow of well fluids and to capture and dispose of them in a safe and controlled way.

The containment toolkit components will be stored and maintained ready for transportation at strategic international locations to facilitate timely response around the world, and will be available for industry use from the end of 2014.

OSRL has selected the following contractors to deliver the toolkit:

– Wellstream International (flexible jumpers and flowlines)

– Expro North Sea (transfer pumps and coolers)

– Trendsetter Engineering (flowline end terminations, flow spools with subsea test tree latch and subsea connectors)

– Oceaneering (mono-ethanol and glycol delivery system)

– Aker Solutions (hose end valve)

– Dunlop Oil and Marine (marine offloading hose)

Provision of both capping and containment capability will be available to the international industry as part of OSRL’s Subsea Well Intervention Service to which companies may subscribe.

Robert Limb, Chief Executive Officer at OSRL said: “It is my commitment to industry, that we shall work together to develop sound contingency planning for both capping and containment, as part of the essential preparation for any potential emergency response to a subsea well incident.”

Keith Lewis, Project Manager at SWRP said: “Development of the containment concept highlights the continuing benefits of close industry collaboration as we strive to enhance incident response capabilities. This is part of a package of measures we have helped to introduce, including the delivery of advanced well-capping equipment earlier this year.”

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Press Release, September 05, 2013; Image: SWRP