Design of New Oil and Gas Wells Fit for Geothermal Applications

摘要

In 2016, World Oil expected that the number of drilled wells in US will rise by 26.8 % in 2017 to a total of 18,552 wells. The number of active oil and gas wells in the United States changed from a total of 1.6 million in 2015 to 1.2 million in 2016 according to the FRACTRACKER, 2017. However, many newly drilled wells has shale as a target which has a lower production average life and a rapid decline in production. Therefore, more mature unproductive wells are planned to be plug and abandonment in the near future. Looking at the calculated cost that may exceed 25 billion dollars for decommissioning and plugging wells under the current method worldwide. Those wells are a great target for geothermal well. Re-designing the wells from the beginning and considering the design of the wells to reflect a future utilization of geothermal power will add more life to those wells for energy production. The average production size for oil and gas nowadays is 7"- 4 1/2". When the geothermal factor is considered, the design of the well should be a bigger hole casing design. Converting to the larger hole wells for geothermal is a turn idea and can be beneficial to the energy industry.