Continued Development and Field Testing of the Subsea Wireline Winch System

ABSTRACT A prototype subsea wireline winch was constructed and run in a test well in 1985, using a borrowed hydraulic power pack1,2. Since then a complete system has been designed and constructed, including a subsea wireline blowout preventor (BOP), subsea electro-hydraulic power and thruster pack and a 3urface heave compensated handling system3. The complete package was first operated in a land test well at Livingston, Scotland. It was then deployed onto a dummy wellhead in the North Sea, beneath the North Sea Pioneer in 385 ft (126.3 m) of water without the use of guidewires. The improvements and conceptual changes to the system, from the original paper read in 1985, are discussed. The results of the tests show that a wireline winch can be deployed onto a subsea wellhead without guidewires, and that remote monitoring and control of a subsea wireline winch is pr actical.