Permit requirements met for drilling from floating production facility
24 August 2011
The Marine Well Containment Company (MWCC) has announced that its interim system has met regulatory requirements for containment operations for deepwater drilling for wells under a floating production facility.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) has approved an ExxonMobil application to drill a new production well from the company's Hoover Diana floating production platform in 4,800 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico. This application is the first to include an industry-developed response plan for a deepwater production well under a floating production facility.
“Deepwater production facilities may have multiple wells and equipment configurations on the seabed that are more complex than single exploration wells,” said MWCC Chief Executive Officer Marty Massey. "With support from its member companies, MWCC worked with BOEMRE and industry organisations to develop the planned response to a well control incident for these configurations. Our interim containment system has the design flexibility to accommodate many different deepwater scenarios, all of which must be assessed on a case-by-case basis."
MWCC's interim containment response system capping stack is engineered to be used in deepwater depths up to 10,000 feet. It includes a 15,000 pounds-per-square-inch capping stack.
The company's expanded containment system is currently on track for delivery in 2012. It is being engineered for use in deepwater depths up to 10,000 feet with the capacity to contain 100,000 barrels of liquid and handle up to 200 million standard cubic feet of gas per day. The expanded containment system will include two dedicated capture vessels.
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