The company, typically associated with fighting well fires and stanching leaks, has completed plugging five of nine wells in the current P&A programme. At 7000 feet of water, it is the deepest riserless P&A ever performed, according to Wild Well.

"We completed the fifth well this morning... we are very much ahead of schedule," Martial Burguieres, Wild Well's vice president of marine well services, said on Monday at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston.