I titled this Technology Focus introduction “Wellbore Tubulars—When It Becomes Useless.” This may sound negative, but many advancements have been achieved in extending the life of the tubulars and maintaining tubular integrity. The question that remains in front of us, however, is how to monitor tubular integrity in real time.
Managing well barriers and maintaining tubular integrity within limits is challenging for complex and aging wells because of many intervening variables. Material and strength degradation of tubulars subjected to constant or varying and concentrated or distributed loads during various operations result in different kinds of tubular failures. Predictive tools are needed for direct and indirect estimation of tubular integrity. Advances have been made to quantify metal loss effectively, thereby estimating strength degradation in a better way.
Digital technology and high computing and processing speeds and novel technologies are providing additional impetus to extend the life of tubulars for long-term sustained production, minimizing negative effects on the environment. Recently, many new technologies borrowed from the horizontal-drilling industry have been applied effectively for downhole conditions to detect abnormalities in the tubulars.
Now technology has advanced to monitor the metal loss of multiple casings at the same time. Some of the novel technologies involve microwave technology, pulsed-eddy-current technology, magnetic flux leakage, advanced sensors, and sensing technology based on fiber optics.
I have selected a few papers that are structured toward this end, and readers can find additional reading on the OnePetro online library.
This Month’s Technical Papers
Cleaned Hydrophone Array Logging Data Aids Identification of Wellbore Leaks
Fiber-Optic Sensing System Allows Real-Time Visualization of Gas-Kick Dynamics
Time-Domain Electromagnetic Measurements Aid Evaluation of Multibarrier Corrosion
Robello Samuel, SPE, is a technology fellow at Halliburton with more than 38 years of multidisciplinary experience in domestic and international oil and gas drilling operations. He has served on the faculty of various universities and, for the past 20 years, has held concurrent adjunct professor appointments at the University of Houston and the University of Southern California. Samuel has authored or coauthored more than 225 technical papers and 14 drilling engineering books and holds 75 US patents. In 2013, he received the SPE Gulf Coast Section Drilling Engineering Award, and, the following year, he was named an SPE Distinguished Lecturer. Samuel holds BS and MS degrees in mechanical engineering and MS and PhD degrees in petroleum engineering from The University of Tulsa and is a member of the JPT Editorial Review Board.