Well Intervention Academy brings offshore experience onshore

While on-the-job training of new offshore personnel is considered important, many companies also see it as increasingly costly and risky. Enter Aker Solutions' new Well Intervention Academy in Stavanger, Norway, a training program and facility that promises to give new generations of offshore operators and engineers first hand experience in critical well intervention activities from an onshore location.

Until recently, oil companies routinely sent new personnel onboard a production platform to undergo on-the-job training. A combination of soaring production costs, greater numbers of production sites worldwide, and increasingly complicated certificate requirements for crews have made the option of onsite training less attractive.

This was the impetus for the new academy, which opened 29 May 2008 at Aker Solutions' operating base in Forus, Stavanger. The facility offers practical and theoretical training to both Aker Solutions' staff and its customers on a range of well intervention; health, safety, and environmental (HSE); and certificate-based topics. With classrooms, workshops, a showroom, and a canteen, the academy is reportedly capable of providing a total of 6,500 days worth of instruction per year on these topics.

Specific courses include an introduction to well intervention and highly technical courses in the operation and maintenance of complex tools and services. Participants will receive hands-on training and instruction in wireline, wireline tractor, logging, pressure control, and crane and lifting operations.

In addition, all training will include HSE procedures and best practice reviews as an integrated part of the courses being offered, according to Ole Petter Thomesen, President of Aker Well Service. "HSE training is a top priority for Aker Solutions and its customers," Thomesen added. "The goal is to minimize HSE incidents and provide the best opportunity to improve HSE performance and employees' judgment during critical situations."

Testing and development

In developing the academy, Aker Solutions realized that the ability to test new technology in controlled surroundings vs. testing in an offshore well would be a huge advantage from a control standpoint. Among the benefits that Aker Solutions highlighted at the academy's opening: an elimination of the risk of misruns and loss of production, reduced HSE hazards, and a minimization of downtime by pinpointing faults at an early stage.

The academy has several pieces of equipment to facilitate realistic and practical testing in an environment as close to real offshore conditions as possible. It has a 28-m high skid-able well intervention tower, a 50-m long horizontal tractor loop, a control room, a 40-m deep vertical well and a 400-m completed well with the opportunity to pressurize and circulate. There is also the possibility for installation of a horizontal well.

The testing facilities at the Well Intervention Academy will test wireline tractors and wireline tractor applications, wireline surface equipment, downhole equipment, logging equipment, and riserless well intervention equipment. The facilities will employ direct-electric winches, a technology that Aker Solutions views as increasing in use vs. diesel and electric/hydraulic driven winches.

StatoilHydro has indicated its intent to utilize this academy for its offshore personnel training by contributing downhole completion equipment for the test well. According to Kristian Sirevaag, Manager of Well Intervention for StatoilHydro, the Norwegian oil giant views this academy as playing an important role "in promoting safe and efficient operations, building competence, and developing new technologies."

"Aker Solutions is recognized as a world class provider of wireline tractor technology and light well intervention services," Thomesen said. "This new center will ensure that we maintain this position, both in the North Sea as well as in the international markets."

To learn more about Aker Solutions' well intervention solutions, visit www.akersolutions.com.

Ted Moon is the Technology Editor of JPT Online. He brings information on emerging technologies, R&D successes, new field applications, updates from SPE papers about recent innovations, and more. If you have a question or suggestion for future article topics, email Ted at teched@spe.org.