Well Integrity Technical Section

Dear team,

One of our companies due to the long period delivery of a surface pump to be connected to SCSSSV, they used a hand pump to get the pressure required to keep the down hole valve opened and regularly check the pressure until have the surface pump in place (Two / Three months) foe an offshore well.

My question: is there any side effects from using the hand pump to open the valve and connect the control line with a Fusible plug for just in case a fire happened or damaged the oil will be leaked and the valve will be closed?

And in accordance to the effect of the temperature on the expansion / Contraction  of the oil in the control line will be overcome by regular check to the line pressure.

If this manner is accepted, one could save a lot of cost by not buying the surface control panel equipped with a pump that work automatically !!!

Your feed back is highly appreciated.

Best regards,

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Safwat El-Rebba
Egyptian General Petroleum Corppration
Cairo
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Dear safwat
Surface hand pump is not recommended. Normally the one way valve in these pumps cannot have reliability required for oil well to maintain pressure in the control line. So one day some smart operator will pressurised the line and close the valve in well head to isolate the pump. At that point naturally well will not be flowing. After opening the valve the flowing well fluid will raise the temp Of control line which will expand the control line fluid raising its pressure . And many a time this increase in pressure is sufficient to rupture seal of control valve or initiate leakage in the system.use of Fusible plug is not recommended in such situation. No authority will allow subsurface safety valve system with fusable plug.
Why to complicate the processes. You can assemble simple control panel on short notice for temporary use. We did it long time back . P.k.borthakur

Sent from my iPad

------Original Message------

Dear team,

One of our companies due to the long period delivery of a surface pump to be connected to SCSSSV, they used a hand pump to get the pressure required to keep the down hole valve opened and regularly check the pressure until have the surface pump in place (Two / Three months) foe an offshore well.

My question: is there any side effects from using the hand pump to open the valve and connect the control line with a Fusible plug for just in case a fire happened or damaged the oil will be leaked and the valve will be closed?

And in accordance to the effect of the temperature on the expansion / Contraction  of the oil in the control line will be overcome by regular check to the line pressure.

If this manner is accepted, one could save a lot of cost by not buying the surface control panel equipped with a pump that work automatically !!!

Your feed back is highly appreciated.

Best regards,

------------------------------
Safwat El-Rebba
Egyptian General Petroleum Corppration
Cairo
------------------------------

Dear Safwat,

There are too many unknowns about your specific situation to fully address your question, but there should not be any bad side effects from using a hand pump to operate the SCSSSV (surface-controlled subsurface safety valve) as long as the following conditions are in effect:

1. The fluid in the hand pump is the same or compatible with the hydraulic fluid intended for controlling the valve. Mixing different fluids in the control line system can result in reactions that cause plugging or problems with the proper operation of the valve.
2. The potential pressure build up due to thermal expansion of the trapped control line fluids does not exceed the rated operating pressure of the valve. If the pressure in the control line is closely monitored during early production, then once production has stabilized the control line pressure should not very much due to temperature increases.

Now, regarding your comment about replacing the surface control panel, this is much more complicated. Generally, this panel is part of a more comprehensive safety system designed to shut in the SCSSSV under a number of emergency circumstances like fire or storms, loss of flowline pressure, etc. There are many places where what you suggest could be a violation of regulations. Therefore, without knowing all of the conditions affecting your requirements eliminating the control panel is not something I would recommend.

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Keith Romaine
Consulting Partner
Halliburton Consulting & Project Management
Sugar LandTX

Dear Safwat,

As others have said, it is difficult to give a definitive answer without knowing more specifics.  However, you should bear in mind that the SCSSV is not only to close in the case of a fire but it is really intended to act as a device to shut off flow from a well if the well is feeding an undesired "leak".  This could be a local fire, a remote fire, a spill, dropped objects breaking off valves/outlets at the Tree, eroded Tree boy/outlets, loss of the Tree, and so on.  Any of these might prevent access to the hand pump when needed to close in the well.

It also goes to the question of how the remainder of your system is arranged - is the SCSSV part of your primary barrier envelope or is it regarded as a safety device only (probably within the primary barrier envelope)?

Another issue might be the plumbing from the pump to the control line - does this meet specification for a more "permanent" installation?

What if the applied pressure bleeds down and the SCSSV ends up slamming shut?  How will this affect the SCSSV itself and other downhole and surface components? Will this trip other parts of the ESD system?

Regards

Alex

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Alexander Crabtree
Sr Prod Eng Advisor
Hess Corp.
HoustonTX

Original Message:
Sent: Mar 14,2016 01:37 PM
From: Keith Romaine
Subject: Control Panel for SCSSSV

Dear Safwat,

There are too many unknowns about your specific situation to fully address your question, but there should not be any bad side effects from using a hand pump to operate the SCSSSV (surface-controlled subsurface safety valve) as long as the following conditions are in effect:

1. The fluid in the hand pump is the same or compatible with the hydraulic fluid intended for controlling the valve. Mixing different fluids in the control line system can result in reactions that cause plugging or problems with the proper operation of the valve.


2. The potential pressure build up due to thermal expansion of the trapped control line fluids does not exceed the rated operating pressure of the valve. If the pressure in the control line is closely monitored during early production, then once production has stabilized the control line pressure should not very much due to temperature increases.

Now, regarding your comment about replacing the surface control panel, this is much more complicated. Generally, this panel is part of a more comprehensive safety system designed to shut in the SCSSSV under a number of emergency circumstances like fire or storms, loss of flowline pressure, etc. There are many places where what you suggest could be a violation of regulations. Therefore, without knowing all of the conditions affecting your requirements eliminating the control panel is not something I would recommend.

------------------------------
Keith Romaine
Consulting Partner
Halliburton Consulting & Project Management
Sugar LandTX