Development of a Cement Repository to Improve the Understanding of Well Integrity Behavior with Time

摘要

Well integrity is becoming a subject of increasing interest with current developments in technical, political and social aspects echoing over the oil and gas industry. Both onshore and offshore activities are strongly constrained by the operator's ability to provide solid facts regarding their well integrity over the life of the well. As a result of new technologies, the life of the well has increased, generating new questions about novel integrity tiers. This paper presents the new cement repository that is currently under development at OU. The concept is to create a physical storage unit as well as a cement database to hold cement samples for a minimum of 5 years after well spud. All information will be stocked on a custom-made database, whereas the cement samples will be kept in a special "cement bank" - holding the cement samples under constant in-situ pressure. The cement samples can be taken during normal cementation jobs at the well site, transported using a "for purpose" developed mobile autoclave system and stored in the special units that will be built at OU. Additional samples (reference units) will be manufactured at the OU Well Integrity Laboratory. The paper will demonstrate that in case of any wellbore integrity issues, wellbore owners will have immediate access to accurate cement properties that can be used to perform numerical studies on the wellbore cement situation.