Weatherford subsea wellhead retrieval system named top industry engineering innovation
Weatherford announced that the most recent version of the company’s subsea wellhead retrieval system, known as M.O.S.T. Plus (Mechanical Outside-latch Single-Trip), has won the Meritorious Award for Engineering Innovation. The honor is awarded to breakthrough products that impact offshore exploration and production.
As a world leader in abandonment technologies and solutions, Weatherford designed M.O.S.T. Plus on its legacy M.O.S.T. technology, “the industry’s leading subsea wellhead cutting and retrieval tool for more than 25 years,” according to Dean Bell, President, Well Construction, Weatherford. “The M.O.S.T. Plus tool uses proprietary Weatherford technology to reduce rig time by cutting and recovering multiple cemented or uncemented strings in a single trip. For operators, M.O.S.T. Plus means lower operating costs on each and every subsea wellhead recovery operation.”
The new design includes a tension-cut mandrel which enables rotation through the top drive in tension, a nonrotating flexible stabilizer mitigating surface vibration, a large-diameter cutter and high-angle knives with four times less contact area, effectively decreasing the required overall cutting time. M.O.S.T. Plus also makes it possible for wellhead recovery operations to be conducted with best-in-class pulling capabilities, in addition to multiple fail-safe release features.
M.O.S.T. Plus Delivers Results in North Sea Plug and Abandonment Projects
Weatherford plug and abandonment (P&A) experts devised a solution to meet several operators’ objectives for offshore P&A. The M.O.S.T. Plus system, supported by the Weatherford team, enabled the Company’s North Sea customers to recover dozens of wellheads with a single trip. The operations team completed multiple P&A projects with no reportable incidents, reduced the surface inspection time and reduced overall operational time.
“Weatherford develops technologies others don’t, so our customers can do what others can’t,” Mr Bell said.
