The Use of Dope-Free Tubulars in Offshore Operations: Experiences and Benefits

The use of Dope-Free tubulars in offshore operations have been increasingly adopted by different operators since its debut in the North Sea in 2003. Dope-Free tubulars replaces the storage and running pipe dope historically used in Casing and Tubing by a dry coating applied on pipe threads in an industrial controlled environment. The elimination of dope simplifies greatly the supply chain of the preparation of Casing and Tubing for offshore increasing the efficiency, safety and lessening the environmental impact of the process. The main benefits of this technology are: - Improved Operational efficiency - preparation, running, pulling management of rig returns; - Reliability: connections are installed in a more consistent and repetitive manner as the coating is an industrial process replacing a manual operation; - Improve well productivity: eliminating the damage to the formation created by the pipe dope and Health Safety & Environment. Operators experience, after a short learning curve, showed great reductions in installation time, reduction on connections re-make ups and rejects, improvement on workers' Health & Safety conditions by eliminating unsafe tasks and creating cleaner work areas, and minimization of the Environmental impact. This paper describes the experiences and benefits of the use of Dope-Free tubulars in offshore operations in the main offshore oilfields including the North Sea, the Barents Sea, Brasil, Indonesia, Gulf of Mexico and the Persian Gulf.