1.69-inch Electro-Mechanical Pipe Cutting Deployed on Digital Slickline

Abstract

Digital slickline (DSL) has been deployed in the industry since 2013 (Loov et al., 2014 & Wiese et al., 2015) and has proven to be an effective tool to improve well intervention efficiency from the traditional two-unit slickline and eline model. Since initial deployment, the product has continuously expanded services with on-command explosive triggers, non-explosive setting tools, downhole anchors, surface readout (SRO) pulse neutron formation evaluation services, production logging, and multi-finger calipers. Numerous case study papers extol the DSL time savings, which leverages one slickline rig-up & down compared to multiple rig ups and downs when a slickline and a separate eline unit are dispatched to complete the same work scope. On complex interventions such as multiple tubular patches, these savings could be several days, especially if each unit required scheduling to be on location. (Heaney et al., 2020). Other papers (Koriesh et al., 2022) highlight the opportunities for deploying a small and lightweight slickline unit to address offshore platform limits that would not support the larger eline units. Additional benefits of DSL include reduced personnel on board (POB), fewer crane lifts, faster rig up & down, and increased cable speeds compared to eline. Although DSL has many attributes, it still uses a slickline cable, albeit coated, that has a much lower breaking strength than eline and has limited communication bandwidth; nevertheless, the efficiency savings on many interventions is transformative. One service requested for DSL is a non-explosive pipe recovery device to reduce health, safety, and environmental (HSE) risks and provide cost containment in areas that require an explosive escort. One specific device proven effective in pipe recovery is the eline deployed electro-mechanical cutter, which can produce a complete flare-free machine shop quality cut that other pipe-cutting devices cannot match. There are multiple variations of the electric cutting tool, and all employ proprietary high-powered motors that allow the cutting blade to sever the tubular. The novel feature in this paper is a battery-powered 1.69-inch electro-mechanical pipe-cutting tool deployed on DSL or eline to cut pipe from 2.375 to 3.5-inch diameter that dominates many completions globally. The paper will discuss tool development details and verification testing to ensure a battery-powered device could sever the expected downhole tubulars.