plugging and abandonment

The outlook in the UK is a case study of the squeeze facing E&P in other basins where operators are trying to pay to sustain production with discoveries, while plugging and abandoning old wells, all paid for by the lean cash flow due to low oil prices.

Kentucky lawmakers have introduced House Bill 199 to plug orphaned oil and gas wells and abandoned storage tanks that threaten health, safety, and the environment.

When energy companies go bankrupt, the cleanup of their old oil and gas wells must take priority over paying off creditors, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on 31 January.

When a new horizontal well in Asia was incapable of unassisted flow, coiled tubing (CT) was selected for the perforation and stimulation intervention. Mechanical isolation was required to ensure that the stimulation fluids entered only the new zones.

With no money to be made, P&A is one area where operators can put aside their hyper-competitiveness to work together. Members of the recently formed PACE network discussed the virtues of collaboration at the Decommissioning and Abandonment Summit 2018.

The shutting in of unprofitable offshore wells and the requirements for their plugging and abandonment is attracting more attention to what is being done with the associated subsea equipment. The benefits of leaving subsea systems in place vs. recovering them are being considered.

Archer’s Stronghold Barricade well decommissioning system leaves the casing in place, while perforating, washing, and cementing the annulus to create a cement barrier in a single trip.

A new downhole-tool-based abandonment system was developed and deployed successfully on four wells for a major operator on a field in the North Sea.

The complete paper describes how various P&A designs can be compared by use of a risk methodology that takes account of degradation mechanisms, potential flow rates, and the effect on the environment.

This paper presents full-scale tests that show it is possible to obtain good cement placement when the tubing is left in the hole.