Deepwater Subsea Well Conductor Design

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Typical deepwater wells in soft clay sites employ jet pipes as the well foundations, i.e., the jetted conductors. The installation of jetted conductors relies on the combination of hydraulic jetting, reciprocation and bottom hole bit cutting. The jetting process weakens the surrounding soil and enables the penetration of the conductor to the target depth, but the weakened soil inevitably provides low axial resistance for the subsequent casing that hangs on the wellhead. An alternative well foundation to jetted conductors is the drill & grouted (D&G) well conductors, in which case an enlarged hole will be drilled first and then the steel pipe is installed with cement pumped to the annulus to grout the soil and the steel. The third option for a subsea well conductor is a driven pile that is hammered into the seabed. Different types of well conductors possess unique installation and capacity features that need to be evaluated carefully for a specific well under consideration to balance safety and cost. Thus, the motivation of this paper is to offer typical design process and methods to promote safe and reliable design of subsea well conductors. The focus of the paper is on the above three most common conductor types: jetted conductors, D&G conductors and driven conductors.

5th International Symposium on Frontiers in Offshore Geotechnics (ISFOG2025)

13 - Developmental foundation and anchoring concepts: hybrid foundations, ring anchors, helical piles, torpedo, shared anchoring