First Rigless Intervention in Bonga Deepwater

Abstract In the Bonga Deepwater project, while exploring subsea well intervention and stimulation campaign opportunity, the subsea Rigless intervention strategy, which has been in the SNEPCo team's technology maturation funnel for some years, re-surfaced. In the first quarter of 2017, the Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company (SNEPCo) Deepwater team led the industry to deploy the first ever riser-less technology for well intervention operations in Nigeria. The main objective was to prove the rigless intervention concept and capability in the Bonga Deepwater project. The team focused on improving production enhancement and sustaining well integrity on the Bonga Main Project by minimizing well-intervention cost without compromising process safety, achieving incident free operation, and delivered the project at 50% less than what this scope of work would have cost using a Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU). Additionally, the acid stimulations added 9,200 barrels of crude oil per day to the company's production. As with every new project, several challenges were encountered, and new ideas were developed. The team acquired a lot of learning from the planning phase, vessel mobilization to execution. These learnings have been integrated into the team's standard operating procedure and shared with other stakeholders. Additionally, the knowledge and learnings gained from this project have been harnessed in collaboration with the service provider and Original Equipment manufacturer (OEM) to modify and upgrade an existing in-house well intervention well control package (EDP/LRP) for riserless intervention access in the Bonga Deepwater project.