Success Story Handling the Blowout of Three Wells in Hululais Geothermal Field with Capping Method

摘要

Capping job activities in three geothermal wells straight away have been done sucessfully in Indonesia for the first time in the world, located at working area of PT. Pertamina Geothermal Energy (PGE) location in Cluster-A Hululais Field. Catastrophy of landslide in Bukit Beriti within 2 km away from the location of Hululais-A had damaging three production wells that broke all of the wellhead. In order to prevent more severe effects, immediate and effective well control action should be taken. Based on well data and closed monitoring of actual blowout condition there are few scenarios to handle this disaster such as direct pump method, pneumatic method & BOP method. Points taken from monitoring environmental conditions were the usage of appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) for environmental conditions in Hululais-A was required, such as double ear protection (ear plug + ear muff) that intended to reduce the impact of noise that reaches 132 dB and also raincoat usage as a protection from brine water outburst. Before capping job was conducted, initially, cleared location needed from the remains of pile material which largely cover the landslide location at Hululais-A. After clearing work was done, well control method selection can be determined by appropriate methodes of work based on each well actual condition, until finally from some of the methodes that have been prepared, capping job sucessfully carried out using BOP method as an answers of this problem. In the process of capping job in these three wells, there was visible improvement from the job, of the tool itself and the processing time was getting better and effective in the next well capping activity.