Best Practices for Managing Subsea Well Plug and Abandonment Operation in Offshore Malaysia During COVID-19 Pandemic

In 2020, PCSB implemented the first permanent Plug & Abandonment (P&A) campaign for three Subsea wells in a gas field offshore Malaysia. The main objective of the campaign was to establish two (2) barriers for every movable hydrocarbon or overpressure bearing sand by placing laterally extended cement plug across impermeable formation with enough formation strength to handle the pressure of the formation to be isolated. The unique case of this operation was the challenges to execute PCSB's first subsea P&A operation in gas field Malaysia during pandemic situation. In March 2020, the Malaysian government imposed Movement Control Order (MCO) to curb the spread of the COVID-19. A semi-submersible rig was on-hired a week after government initiated the MCO, resulted in the rig preparation being badly hampered due to manpower management and material fabrication and delivery. PCSB was exposed to expensive rig daily rate that had to be managed. Four (4) main challenges were encountered during operation: safe protection for workers, expensive standby cost, manpower management and material fabrication and delivery. This paper, from the ‘project management’ point of view, describes the journey of managing rig operation during PCSB's first subsea wells P&A in Malaysia efficiently amidst the pandemic by reducing the impact of COVID-19 on project cost. With the experience of managing rig for subsea well operation, a complex operation in Malaysia, amidst pandemic, PCSB sharing on the experience is beneficial to provide context setting and benchmark on maintaining the efficiency of operation. Wells successfully met the objective of operation with no incident occurred, negotiated reduction on standby cost and managed to bring critical manpower on time during operation.