Subsea specialist Flexlife has completed high levels of annulus testing work during the last 12 months, including its first work off Africa. All the projects achieved definitive results within days.

Flexlife Chief Executive Stuart Mitchell said: “Flexlife has built a reputation for responding quickly and delivering accurate results that minimise downtime and maximise safe productive time. We have seen a major ramping up in our annulus testing and international work during 2011 with 55 flexible risers tested in the course of 10 projects for operators. We are confident this will help us to secure further projects in target locations in the future.

“We believe the growing demand for our services is a combination of building a successful track record that has established our reputation and stringent environmental standards being enforced globally.’’

The Flexlife team was brought in by operators either carrying out routine checks or requiring rapid testing. Work completed recently in the UK, West Africa, North Africa and Thailand has a total value of nearly £1million.

Projects have included testing to assess if critical production risers were still suitable for service after an equipment failure, checking risers potentially damaged during installation and more routine testing on a number of FPSOs which might lead to repair work using Flexlife’s patented technology.

Mr Mitchell added: “We had to rapidly mobilise teams of engineers in a number of cases and were able to give results that either allowed production to continue or to be brought back online. Flexlife are unique in that our testing personnel have vast experience in the manufacturing of flexible risers-mitigating the risk of returning onshore with inconclusive test results, while our annulus testing equipment provides the most accurate, quick and cost effective means of determining annulus volume.

“With the Flexlife annulus volume testing kit, there is no need for bulky shipping containers - the kit is fully portable and easily heli ported, and can be mobilised quickly and efficiently anywhere in the world. A further benefit of the compact equipment means that it can be easily carried to the test location without the need for complex lifting operations.’’

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