Innovations push safe, efficient work platforms for coiled-tubing applications

By Katie Mazerov

New and expanded applications for coiled-tubing (CT) services are pushing the industry to develop work platforms that deliver greater safety and efficiency. “Operators are realizing they need a safer way of working in environments where heavy equipment and other potential hazards can impact both safety and economics,” said Joe Miller, vice president and general manager of Devin International, a global provider of CT structural support services, including lift frames, towers and compensators, for offshore operations.

“For example, one of the directives coming from operators is they don’t want their employees working under suspended loads, such as injector heads that are used to introduce continuous pipe down the hole,” Mr Miller said. “If people are working under a load that is suspended from a block, there is always the potential for someone to get hurt. Our structures allow an operator to rig up and release the crane so their employees are no longer working under those loads.”

For operations requiring jointed pipe and CT, dual-purpose towers can run both. CT lift frames also can provide a work window in the completion string to run coil, wireline or snubbing.

Devin’s Mobile Track Stack, an enhanced version of a tool the company developed in 1995, includes a modular tower that can be built to whatever height is needed, Mr Miller said. Components include a hydraulic top piece that allows the injector head to move horizontally or vertically. “This new system is much safer and faster,” he explained. “The tower is on a trailer so when we get to a location we don’t require a crane to actually put it together. The tower hydraulically positions and lifts itself off the trailer and positions itself over the well. We can get rigged up in 45 minutes as opposed to six hours.”

Motion compensation services are also offered for CT, wireline or snubbing equipment for deepwater environments where platform movement due to weather or loop currents can impact, and even shut down, an operation. The Motion Buster motion compensation system is a passive compensator that counters vertical and lateral movement, stabilizing the equipment during well intervention services.

A new self-compensating lift frame, which compensates for vertical movement of well intervention equipment on floating platforms or mobile offshore drilling units due to tidal or wave action effects, will be shipped to Angola this year, Mr Miller said.

A subsidiary of Greene’s Energy Group, Devin has operations in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and West Africa and the Middle East.