SAFETY ALERT

Lift nubbins incident.

The incident,
An incident occurred on HWO equipment trials for offshore operations at the DTL
test facility in Aberdeen.

An assembly backed out of the lift nubbin from which it was suspended causing a
dropped object incident.

It is standard industry practice to use nubbins or lifting caps for lifting equipment to
the rig floor and, in many circumstances, suspending assemblies or tubulars while
they are made up in the rotary. It the most common and practical solution where
assemblies have a limited or no external upset. This is the case for rig operations
and also interventions with coil, wire and HWO.

Best practice for rigs is to use the nubbin to lift the assembly to the drill-floor hand-
tight, but then to tighten the nubbin in the mouse-hole before making up to the
string. i.e. before rotating it. Another alternative is to pre-assemble pups with
adequate upset for lifting to the top of assemblies.

For HWO operations nubbins need to be easily removable for well control purposes
so that a well control valve can be inserted at short notice.

Required actions
The immediate solution was to paint a line across the nubbin/assembly and to
modify the nubbin so that this was visible to detect if it starts to back out. This
however does not eliminate the hazard and the incident review suggested that
alternate designs for nubbins or alternate devices could be investigated as the best
way of eliminating re-occurrence.

It is therefore proposed that an initiative be made to eliminate the use of loose fit
nubbins for all operations.

- Make-up of assemblies and/or the lifting of a string connected to a hand (wrench)

tight nubbin is not acceptable and should be eliminated by design.
- Lifting of assemblies, but not whole strings, where no rotation is involved, is
acceptable for hand (wrench) tightened nubbins.
- Where possible, the use of loose nubbins should be eliminated by changes to
procedure, the use of pups with suitable upset, pre-torqued nubbins or other
appropriate methods.
- For HWO operations requiring well control or other similar circumstances, nubbin
design and procedure must ensure that it is not possible for the nubbin to back
out while the assembly is made up to the string.

File Ref.: 02-03 Alert - Lift Nubbins Issued by: EGIS HSEQC Dept.
Issue Date: 28 February, 2003