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Akbar Novruz

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bp has successfully completed a multi-well subsea intervention campaign at the Deepwater Gunashli section of the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea.

Russell Morris, bp’s Vice President for Wells in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Türkiye, said the company had launched the multi-well subsea intervention campaign at Deepwater Gunashli in October last year.

“Today, I am pleased to note that the campaign has been successfully concluded, all intended goals have been achieved in compliance with safety regulations, and the operation was completed approximately one month ahead of schedule,” Morris said.

According to him, the campaign covered seven subsea wells that had previously been considered difficult to access using traditional intervention methods.

“By completing intervention work on these wells, we were able to conduct effective monitoring, identify opportunities for reservoir pressure management and increased production, which contributed to revealing additional potential of the field,” he said.

Morris noted that the manner in which the campaign was carried out made the achievement particularly significant.

“The campaign represented the first application of lightweight well intervention (RLWI) technology in bp’s Caspian operations. To achieve this, the subsea construction vessel Khankendi was successfully transformed into a lightweight well intervention vessel (LWIV) in just a few months, an impressive achievement for the teams involved,” he said.

A key element of the transformation was the installation and commissioning of a moonpool system aboard the Khankendi. Positioned near the vessel’s centerline, the moonpool creates a protected vertical passage through the hull, allowing subsea equipment, remotely operated vehicles and intervention tools to be safely lowered directly to the seabed.

According to Morris, Oceaneering’s BORIS system, or Blue Ocean Riserless Intervention System, was at the heart of the operation.

“This is an advanced subsea mechanical cable intervention system that enables access to subsea wells without the need for a traditional drilling RLWI. Despite weighing approximately 50 tonnes, BORIS was successfully deployed on board the vessel and provided well control, pressure maintenance and full subsea management, protecting multiple independent well barriers throughout the intervention operations,” he said.

Morris said the technically complex project brought together bp and several of its major contractors, including Saipem, Oceaneering and SLB.

“This highly complex project has brought together the expertise of bp and some of our main contractors, including Saipem, Oceaneering and SLB, in engineering, subsea technologies, vessel operations, production, logistics and well services, on a single platform,” he said.

The bp vice president emphasized that the project had demonstrated new ways of accessing and managing subsea infrastructure and could provide greater flexibility for future operations in the Caspian.

“This now gives us greater flexibility for future subsea interventions in the Caspian. It is also a shining example of how advanced technology, collaboration and operational excellence can help maximize production from mature assets such as ACG, which is part of the bp CCAT (Caspian, Central Asia and Türkiye) region,” Morris said.