Introduction of Smart Circulating Sub in Offshore Abu Dhabi

Abstract

\n The paper describes deployment phase of a smart circulating sub in offshore Abu Dhabi field as an effort to improve efficiency and flexibility in tackling operational drilling risk and minimize associated NPT. It will describe the pre-campaign technical assessment and preparation, the field operation summary, the detail activation record, and the trial statistics including the activation success ratio including also some reliability milestones that will beneficial to be reference in term of tool functionality and reliability.\n The smart sub offers practicality to select three different flow path mode on top of the isolation mode without any necessity to pull out of hole nor to disconnect the pipe at surface. Different from any other conventional tool, the command to change the flow path mode is fully achieved only by manipulating absolute pressure or pipe rotation speed. Thus, it will save time, lower the operational risk as well as increase flexibility. As part of new technology implementation, a set of factory test and field trial run were conducted to evaluate its operability, reliability, and also to define its technical limit.\n A total of 8 field trial runs with 38 activation in more than 800 running hours has proved the system s the reliability through the field trial. And through the paper, some feedback from the field trial runs that is aimed to raise a design and operational improvement towards a more robust tool functionality.