Red Spider’s eRED Completes 100 Operations

Red Spider, the Remote Open Close Technology specialist delivering major savings and reduced risk to the oil & gas industry, has announced completing 100 operations using its ground-breaking eRED tool.

The work involving eRED has generated multi-million pound sales for Red Spider and has taken place across 30 fields in the UK, Norway, Australia and Equatorial Guinea resulting in significant risk reduction and maximisation of production time by removing wireline runs from operations.

Red Spider Chief Executive Steve Nicol said: “eRED has had a major impact on establishing Red Spider’s reputation in the UK and internationally. The tool is incredibly flexible as well as reliable and has been used for a wide range of operations by 18 customers. Many of them have taken advantage of its flexibility to deploy it for various uses ensuring the technology is on its way to becoming the industry standard solution for various downhole applications.

“eRED has allowed major operators to save more than £300,000 during a single subsea completion operation, typically reducing slickline runs from 8 to 1. In deepwater workover operations, savings of up to 36 hours and £500,000 have also been recorded in a single job, as well as major reductions in risk. More recently, two or even three eREDs have been deployed in subsea operations showing just how versatile the tool is and how new applications keep emerging. ’’

eRED is a battery-powered through-tubing device which is pre-installed or deployed below a carrier such as a wireline lock. In practice it works exactly like a wireline plug, but without requiring any intervention to deploy or retrieve the plug when a barrier needs to be put in place or removed. Any application where a wireline lock and plug is used can be replaced by an eRED, thus achieving exactly the same results without repeated intervention jobs, which in turn removes the risk of multiple slickline runs. The eRED can be used in complex well programs, opening and closing as many times as required without any intervention.

An eRED action, such as opening or closing, is initiated only when a specific well condition (known as a trigger) is detected. Upon successful completion of that action, the eRED can look for another trigger which in turn initiates the next action. Using a series of different trigger and action combinations, the eRED can be used in complex well programs, opening and closing as many times as required without any intervention.

As an example of its flexibility the eRED, which was originally developed to be used in intervention type plugging operations, began to be used for a variety of other applications. These applications include shallow set for tree testing and change out, deep set for completion deployment, packer setting and tubing testing, annulus short string plug in vertical subsea trees, liner deployment with external swellable elastomers and zonal isolation during TCP gun firing. The company continues to add to this list as the Operators, enjoying the significant risk reduction and cost savings made by the tool, suggest more and more practical applications for the eRED tool.

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Offshore Nieuws Staff, April 26, 2012; Image : Red Spider