Tech Paper Expediting Deepwater Subsea Development with a Batch Drilling and Completion Strategy
Lessons learned offshore Angola about root cause analysis, intervention operations, and new completion design.
Formation isolation valve
The valve features the Trip Saver one-time remote-opening mechanism, which eliminates the need for an intervention to open the valve one time. Instead, cycles of tubing pressure are applied against the closed valve in a number predetermined by an integral indexing mechanism.
The valve has a wide range of applications, including fluid loss control, underbalanced perforating, well control barrier operations, and multizone isolation. Because of the rotating ball and floating seal design, the valve is more debris tolerant compared with previous designs, making it especially useful in sandface completions.
The FIV-II valve is qualified and tested with gas to a zero-bubble leak rate across the ball sealing mechanism from below under specified conditions. This stringent acceptance criterion enables the valve to be used as a barrier for well intervention operations and for well suspension before the Trip Saver mechanism is activated.