TDW Offshore Services AS (TDW) has completed a pipeline pressure isolation operation in India. The successful operation adds a new facet to TDW’s long and productive relationship with its customer, a major operator in India.

Quick Response Saves Millions The operation was carried out on a pipeline that runs between two platforms offshore Mumbai. TDW was contacted by the operator after a leaking valve on a future tie-in connection (tee) on the pipeline was discovered. The operator was faced with a very difficult and potentially costly predicament. Due to the leaking valve subsea caused by an anchor drag accident, production was stopped so the valve could be removed and a blind flange placed on the connection. The operator had two options. The first was to bleed down the entire pipeline, which would have been very expensive and time consuming, costing potentially millions of dollars in lost production per day. Pipeline profiling is very difficult, especially when carried out in varying degrees of water depth. Had the operator been required to flood the pipeline in order to repair it, it would have been extremely challenging to dewater the pipeline before putting it back into production.

As an alternative, TDW proposed using its SmartPlug® isolation technology. TDW advised pigging the SmartPlug tool in from one of the platforms past the leaking tee, and then setting the tool so that the valve could be safely removed. The advantage of this option was that it could be completed in a matter of days without bleeding down the pipeline, saving millions of dollars in downtime.

The customer retained TDW to carry out the second option. A site visit followed immediately thereafter, and engineering personnel mobilized offshore from Mumbai six weeks later. The SmartPlug tool was set, and the operation was successfully and completed within two days. The crew and tool were then demobilized and normal production on the platform resumed.
The operator desperately needed a quick solution to the valve problem, and TDW provided just that. “The operation clearly demonstrated that our SmartPlug isolation technology offers a quick and cost-effective solution to subsea pipeline problems of this type,” said Rolf Gunnar Lie, Regional Business Development Manager - South East Asia for TDW. “When one considers the alternatives, the potential savings for a client are likely to be huge,” he added.

Tags: TDW Offshore Services