Marwell and Maxwell save costs through stop collar design in close tolerance application
Marwell has successfully installed a tailored and cost-effective solution to replace centralizer subs for a major international oil company. The project was undertaken in close conjunction with its partner, Maxwell Oil Tools.
A 17-in. liner was required to run through a 17.562-in. ID wellhead restriction to centralize the string sufficiently in the under reamed 20-in. open hole. Marwell worked closely with the operator and Maxwell to design an ultra-slim stop collar with high holding force for the application. The selected product was the Slimstop bonded composite stop collar.
Taking place on a redevelopment of a mature field in the Norwegian North Sea, the well consisted of a chalk formation. To achieve the cementing objectives, the stop collars were run together with a third-party bow spring-type centralizer to give the required standoff in the under-reamed open hole. The resulting close tolerance stop collar application was independently verified as being extremely robust, and the operator successfully ran the 17-in. liner through the wellhead restriction and cemented it as planned. The robust bonded-to-pipe solution was installed at the Marwell installation facility in Stavanger at a fraction of the cost of using centralizer subs.
“Offering innovation and cost savings to clients in what is a challenging environment means they can realize savings of several days of rig time. This achievement means we have the ability to turn a borderline project into an economically viable one,” Mike Williamson, Managing Director of Marwell, said. “In this case, our design effectively solved the operator’s challenge and allowed them to successfully adopt a robust bonded-to-pipe solution at a fraction of the cost.”
Marwell has recently opened a new dedicated MCC centralizer installation facility in Stavanger. The new facility has capacity for several hundred joints of casing per week to cater for the expected growth in demand for the MCC product line.
