Claxton Remember Past North Sea Subsea Engineering Feat

Claxton Engineering Services Ltd, a member of the Acteon Group’s risers, conductors and flowlines business, has celebrated the 10th anniversary of its success with the world’s first rigless platform well abandonment operation.

In that first rigless abandonment project, at the Perenco Well A1 in the Leman field, southern North Sea, Claxton used a custom conductor reaction recovery system designed and manufactured specifically to interface with the Leman platform and to retrieve and handle well trees and tubulars. Its full casing recovery package was also required. The SABRE™ abrasive water jet cutting system played a key role and has since been used on many significant abandonment campaigns.

When then Leman Abandonment was completed, calculations showed that the overall cost of the project, as conducted by Claxton and Acteon sister company, InterAct, was less than 50 percent of an equivalent rig-based solution. The Perenco Well A1 proved to be a game-changer with the introduction of pioneering technical solutions that have since become commonplace.

Since then, Claxton say they have become the North Sea’s pre-eminent riser supplier and have launched an expanding range of product, process and running tool innovations. The company has also been involved in decommissioning more than 60 North Sea platform wells, in most cases without using a drilling rig or lift vessel. In total, the Claxton decommissioning tooling spread has been used on more than 260 successful well abandonment and conductor removal projects.

www.claxtonengineering.com