A Simple and Effective Method for Landing the Production Tubing in a Subsea/DeepWater Well; a Case Study in Southeast Asia

Difficulties due to well and water depths, deviations, and rig heave while spacing out production tubing and landing the tubing hanger on subsea completions can significantly challenge space-out operations. Another challenge occurs when attempting to enter the casing at the subsea tree in deep water. During actual completions, subsea currents can produce a bending motion on the riser, causing the bottom of the completion to enter the casing at an angle. If the angle is too great, setdown weight or compression must be added to push the completion through, making shearable-activated travel joints risky. Premature stroking of a standard travel joint from friction in deviated wells is also possible. These problems and the fact that deepwater rig rates are significant, make it imperative that the production tubing string be landed efficiently. Therefore, a successful completion design must manage friction while having sufficient rigidity to land seals into production packers at high angles with limited slack-off weight. This paper discusses a recent deepwater project in Malaysia where these potential problems and others due to the high deviations were possible during the completions. To address these issues, a service/engineering company had developed a long space-out travel joint (LSOTJ) designed to telescope downward in response to a timed application of a compressive load instead of a shearing event as in standard designs. The LSOTJ then slowly scopes downward during lowering of the production tubing until the hanger is landed. The Malaysian operator decided to use the LSOTJ in their development because of its success in the Gulf of Mexico. Eleven of the non-continuous sealing (NCS-LSOTJ) version and three of the continuous sealing version (CS-LSOTJ) were used. This was the first usage of the NCS-LSOTJ in Malaysia, and the first usage world-wide of the CS-LSOTJ. The case history will discuss the completion success.