Offshore staff
GALVESTON, Texas– Wright’s Well Control Services introduced a new heave-compensated wireline system at the Subsea Tieback Forum & Exhibition held in Galveston, Texas.
This wire-line deployment tool tensioner is designed to compensate for the motion of a heaving vessel for safer operations using tools or tubing strings. The tensioner serves as a pneumatic shock absorber and spring device, using compressed nitrogen as the spring and hydraulic fluid for damping. In addition, the sheave housing mounted on the top and bottom of the cylinder provides a two-to-one mechanical advantage, which rapidly removes slack in the cable and maintains steady tension as the vessel rises and falls in heaving seas.
Specifications include a rating of 32,000 lb; the ability to add up to 6,000 lb nitrogen via a quick connection; a maximum working pressure of 3,000 psi; and a weight of 9,200 lb.
Wright’s says that for deployment, the wireline is fed from a deployment winch, reeved around two sheave assemblies on each end of a tensioner. The wireline goes through snatchblock placed above moonpool; and at the control panel, the operator monitors operations and increases or decreases tension as required.
The company says that the benefits of the new system include greatly reduced risk of the wireline breaking and losing tool string, and the fact that it allows continued wireline operations in rougher seas. In addition, Wright’s says the new system minimizes downtime needed to re-head the line and replace tool string, and delivers cost-savings to the client.
“Our heave-comp wireline system is an important first step in offering our customers added stability and safety for offshore operations particularly in rougher seas,” said Wright’s Well Control Services president David Wright. “This new wireline system stabilizes itself with a nitrogen-filled cylinder assembly, and we will begin testing in April. The same stability concept will be rolled out on a much larger scale later this year with the industry’s first heave-compensated riser system – introducing the benefits of a riser for rigless intervention work and subsea P&As.”
3/6/2012
The new wire-line deployment tool tensioner from Wright’s Well Control Services is designed to compensate for the motion of a heaving vessel, for safer operations using tools or tubing strings.
