Woodside makes plans to abandon three Australian wells

Australia’s Woodside has submitted a decommissioning plan for subsea infrastructure no longer required for production activities from the Echo Yodel field offshore Australia and the plan is now being assessed by the country’s offshore regulator.

The plan was
submitted on 17 April to Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety and
Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA).

According to
the offshore regulator, Woodside’s plan proposes to permanently plug for
abandonment the Yodel-3 and Yodel-4 production wells, and the Capella 1
exploration well.

Permanent
plugging will involve removing temporary plugs and installing permanent
abandonment barriers in the wells using a mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU).

Woodside will
leave the Echo Yodel subsea infrastructure in-situ permanently to enable the infrastructure
to continue to provide a hard substrate to maintain the marine growth and
habitat that currently supports local ecological functions.

The proposed petroleum
activities program is scheduled to occur between the first quarter of 2021 and
fourth quarter of 2023.

Permanent
plugging activities for the three wells is expected to take about 20 to 60 days
per well to complete. If performed as a single campaign, the cumulative
duration could be up to 180 days, including mobilisation and demobilisation.

As for the
infrastructure that will be left in-situ, it includes the Yodel-3 and Yodel-4 Xmas
trees, pipeline, umbilical, infield umbilical termination basket, umbilical
termination assemblies, and the pig launcher.

It is worth
noting that the activities do not overlap with any established or proposed
marine protected areas with the closest nearshore sensitive habitats being the boundary
of the Montebello Australian Marine Park some 24 kilometres to the south.