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Shell wins prestigious ICoTA Europe Innovation Award

The winner of the prestigious ICoTA Europe Innovation Award was recently announced during ICoTA Week.

The award is presented annually by the Intervention & Coiled Tubing Association (ICoTA) European Chapter to a service company or Operator for the application of technological innovation in the area of well intervention.

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This year’s winner is Shell for their Local Expander Tool. To reduce environmental foot print and complexity, Shell’s ambition is to decommission wells in a rigless manner. The Local Expander's unique capability is to reliably repair a single annulus with only a wire line unit.

“The Shell Wells Technology team is honoured to win the 2020 ICoTA European Innovation Award for its local expander technology, which has been commercialized globally through licensee holders to benefit the entire industry,” said Wout Keultjes, Team Lead Abandonment, Research Abandonment Technologies at Shell. “The local expander tool repairs well annuli by densifying the cement by means of a wireline deployed tool. As the technology is fully rigless, it reduces complexity and environmental footprint of the well abandonment. Winning this prestigious award demonstrates Shell’s long-term ambition toward innovation.”

Previous winners of the award include Dwellop and Shell for the ‘Lynx wireline mast’ - an integrated tower and mast system; Ocean Team Scandinavia A/S for its ground-breaking SCC02 technology; Well-SENSE for its FiberLine Intervention technology; Shell, Helix Well Ops and Altus Intervention for the collective group’s collaboration on an innovative system designed to increase oil production; and E Plug for the TorcPlug technology.

The ICoTA Innovation Award 2021 will open for entries in June 2021.