About Us

History

TecWel was established and incorporated under the law of Norway in September 2001. Identification of technological gaps and input from potential clients were important factors leading to the birth of TecWel. However, some of the very foundations of the company were professional friendships dating back to the beginning of the 1980s.

During 2002 TecWel spent all its time and efforts on developing and manufacturing the WLD (Well Leak Detector) tool and service. The project was funded by Statoil, Norsk Hydro Produksjon and the Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development Fund. At present the two oil companies have merged into “StatoilHydro” and the Norwegian Industrial and Regional Development Fund has been reorganized and is now called “Innovation Norway”.  In 2002 TecWel and the WLD project were run and operated in a typically entrepreneurial manner, just a few people working day and night to make ends meet. This was an interesting and very instructive period for both people and company. We started with two empty hands, some great visions and, a lot of technical skills; we ended the year by performing a successful full-scale test of the WLD tool under freezing conditions on the quayside of an offshore base outside Bergen.

During February 2003 the very first commercial field operation in the history of TecWel was performed. The WLD was run in a water injection well on the Norwegian Continental Shelf, and a leak was detected and confirmed in the expansion joint. A total of 14 jobs were carried out during this first year of operations, most of them on the Norwegian Shelf, but two of them as far away as Papua New Guinea. In parallel to running operations, TecWel started doing marketing outside Norway, and, based on input form the market, TecWel Inc. was established towards the end of 2003.

Come 2004, TecWel was focused on continuing performing quality services and building the marketing apparatus, and by the end of that year TecWel Sdn Bhd was established in Malaysia. R&D has been and will continue to be a very important activity within the TecWel group, and during 2004 the work on the WPE (Well Performance Eye) project really got started.

As both TecWel and the market gained experience with ultrasound technology, new potential areas for using the technology emerged. In 2005 this resulted in TecWel introducing the WSD (Well Sand Detector). In 2005 TecWel started growing seriously; although it was, still a small company working in a niche, the number of employees doubled between 2004 and 2005, and by the beginning of 2005 TecWel LLC had been established in UAE.

For the past few years TecWel has been focusing on building a solid organization capable of handling the growth in number of employees, number of services performed per year, turnover, marketing and also introduction of new services like the WAF (Well Annular Flow) that was introduced in 2006 and the WFP (Well Flow Profile) that was released in 2007.

In May 2008 it was being announced that TecWel is purchased by Seawell Limited. Seawell is a company providing well services with core business being platform drilling, drilling facility engineering, modular rig and workover units, well intervention and oilfield technology. The company employs approximately 2300 skilled and experienced people. Seawell currently operates on nearly 50 installations in the North Sea and has offices in Stavanger, Bergen, Aberdeen, Newcastle, Houston and Esbjerg.

TecWel will continue with “business as usual” and are looking forward to benefit on synergies with the new owners.