Baker Hughes announced the introduction of its Hammerhead™ system—the industry’s first fully integrated wellhead-to-reservoir ultradeepwater completion and production system. Developed to withstand extreme environments, such as the Gulf of Mexico’s Lower Tertiary trend, the Hammerhead system is designed to enable reliable long-term, high-rate production. The system will close an important technology gap to help operators realize full-field economic payback from their ultradeepwater assets.
“We expect the Hammerhead system to improve recovery factors by 2% in the Lower Tertiary through enhanced reservoir stimulation, higher drawdown capability and long-term optimized production,” said Richard Ward, President, Global Products and Services at Baker Hughes. “Using a standard well in a lower tertiary field as an example, a 2% improvement could translate to more than USD4 billion at prices of USD50 per barrel over the life of the well.”
The Hammerhead system includes an upper completion, a lower completion, an isolation assembly and intelligent production capabilities, and is fully compatible with subsea boosting. Designed and tested for conditions in well depths up to 33,000 ft (10,060 m) and water depths up to 10,000 ft (3050 m)—including temperatures up to 300⁰F (150⁰C) and pressures up to 25,000 psi (1700 bar)—based upon the test conditions, the system could provide reliable operations during well life cycles of 20+ years.
Aggressive reservoir stimulation capabilities, coupled with a 30,000 bbl/day flow capacity, will enable maximum production rates. The Hammerhead system’s industry-leading 15,000 psi (1030 bar) differential pressure will help increase reservoir drainage. Remote surveillance and control capabilities will allow operators to optimize production, while proactive flow assurance will enable optimal sustained production rates will help to limit interruption for increased recovery.
The Hammerhead system was developed by the Baker Hughes Lower Tertiary Integrated Project Team (IPT).The IPT, created in 2012, is a cross-functional team of 95 dedicated members from various disciplines who are co-located at the Baker Hughes Center for Technology Innovation (CTI) in Houston, where much of the research and design work for the system took place. The CTI’s testing capabilities—up to 40,000 psi and 700°F— are among the highest in the oil and gas industry. These capabilities were critical for validating specifications of every system component.
The IPT worked closely with customers throughout the development process so the system would meet or exceed existing operational and regulatory requirements. Operating outside of the typical business model for product development, the IPT enabled rapid engineering design and development of the system, bringing the system to market in half the time it would typically take for something of its scope and complexity.
After acceptance in the Lower Tertiary, the Hammerhead system will be replicated to meet the specific conditions of other ultradeepwater frontier regions of the world. The next generation system will offer even higher differential pressures and will incorporate Baker Hughes’ advanced in-well electrical submersible pump (ESP) technologies and subsea boosting capabilities from the Baker Hughes / Aker Solutions Subsea Production Alliance to further improve reliability, safety and reserves recovery.
The Hammerhead ultradeepwater system is the latest development in Baker Hughes’ strategy to improve well efficiency, optimize production and increase ultimate recovery.