Christmas tree (oil well)

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In petroleum and natural gas extraction, a Christmas tree, or "tree", (not "wellhead" as sometimes incorrectly referred to) is an assembly of valves, spools, and fittings used for an oil well, gas well, water injection well, water disposal well, gas injection well, condensate well and other types of wells. It was named for its crude resemblance to a decorated tree.

Overview

Note that a tree and wellhead are separate pieces of equipment not to be mistaken as the same piece. A wellhead must be present in order to utilize a Christmas tree and a wellhead is used without a Christmas tree during drilling operations, and also for riser tie-back situations which would then have a tree included at riser top. Producing surface wells that require pumps (pump jacks, nodding donkeys, and so on) frequently do not utilize any tree due to no pressure containment requirement.

Tree complexity has increased over the last few decades. They are frequently manufactured from blocks of steel containing multiple valves rather than made from multiple flanged valves. This is especially true in subsea applications where the resemblance to Christmas trees no longer exists given the frame and support systems into which the main valve block is integrated.

It is common to identify the type of tree as either "subsea tree" or "surface tree". Each of these classifications has a number or varieties within them. Examples of subsea include conventional, dual bore, mono bore, TFL (through flow line), horizontal, mudline, mudline horizontal, side valve, and TBT (through bore tree) trees.

The primary function of a tree is to control the flow into or out of the well, usually oil or gas. A tree often provides numerous additional functions including chemical injection points, well intervention means, pressure relief means (such as annulus vent), tree and well monitoring points (such as pressure, temperature, corrosion, erosion, sand detection, flow rate, flow composition, valve and choke position feedback, connection points for devices such as down hole pressure and temperature transducer (DHPT).

When the operator, well, and facilities are ready to produce and receive oil or gas, valves are opened and the release of the formation fluids is allowed to flow into and through a pipeline. The pipeline then leads to a processing facility, storage depot and/or other pipeline eventually leading to a refinery or distribution center (for gas). Subsea wells and thus trees usually flow through flowlines to a fixed or floating production platform or to a storage vessel (known as a floating storage offloading vessel (FSO), or floating processing unit (FPU), or floating production and offloading vessel or FPSO or other combination of structures).

A tree may also be used to control the injection of gas or water injection application on a producing or non-producing well in order to sustain economic "production" volumes of oil from other well(s) in the area (field).

On producing wells, injection of chemicals or alcohols or oil distillates to prevent and or solve production problems (such as blockages) may be used. Functionality may be extended further by using the control system on a subsea tree to monitor, measure, and react to sensor outputs on the tree or even down the well bore.

The control system attached to the tree controls the downhole safety valve (scssv, dhsv, sssv) while the tree acts as an attachment and conduit means of the control system to the downhole safety valve.

Christmas trees are used on both surface and subsea wells (current technical limits are up to around 3000 metres and working temperatures of -50°F to 350°F with a pressure of up to 15,000 psi). The deepest installed subsea tree is in the Gulf of Mexico at approximately 9000 feet.

Valves

Subsea and surface trees have a large variety of valve configurations and combinations of manual and/or actuated (hydraulic or pneumatic) valves. Examples are identified in API Specifications 6A and 17D.

A basic surface tree consists of two or three manual valves (usually gate valves because of their strength).

A typical sophisticated surface tree will have at least four or five valves, normally arranged in a crucifix type pattern (hence the endurance of the term "Christmas tree"). The two lower valves are called the master valves (upper and lower respectively) because they lie in the flow path, which well fluids must take to get to surface. The lower master valve will normally be manually operated, while the upper master valve is often hydraulically actuated, allowing it to be a means of well control while an actuated wing valve is normally the primary well remotely (from control room or control panel) controlled valve. Hydraulic tree wing valves are usually built to be fail safe closed, meaning they require active hydraulic pressure to stay open.

The right hand valve is often called the flow wing valve or the production wing valve, because it is in the flowpath the hydrocarbons take to production facilities (or the path water or gas will take from production to the well in the case of injection wells).

The left hand valve is often called the kill wing valve. It is primarily used for injection of fluids such as corrosion inhibitors or methanol to prevent hydrate formation. In the North Sea, it is called the non-active side arm (NASA). It is typically manually operated.

The valve at the top is called the swab valve and lies in the path used for well interventions like wireline and coiled tubing. For such operations, a lubricator is rigged up onto the top of the tree and the wire or coil is lowered through the lubricator, past the swab valve and into the well. This valve is typically manually operated.

Some trees have a second swab valve, the two arranged one on top of the other. The intention is to allow rigging down equipment from the top of the tree with the well flowing while still preserving the Two-barrier rule. With only a single swab valve, the upper master valve is usually closed to act as the second barrier, forcing the well to be shut in for a day during rig down operations. However, avoiding delaying production for a day is usually too small a gain to be worth the extra expense of a having a Christmas tree with a second swab valve.

Subsea trees are available in either vertical or horizontal configurations with further speciality available such as dual bore, monobore, concentric, drill-through, mudline, guidlineless or guideline. Subsea trees may range in size and weight from a few tons to approximately 70 tons for high pressure, deepwater (>3000 feet) guidelineless applications. Subsea trees contain many additional valves and accessories compared to Surface trees. Typically a subsea tree would have a choke (permits control of flow), a floline connection interface (hub, flange or other connection), subsea control interface (direct hydraulic, electro hydraulic, or electric) and sensors for gathering data such as pressure, temperature, sand flow, erosion, multiPhase flow, single phase flow such as water or gas.

Manufacturers

See also

References


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