Well Integrity Management: Annulus Pressure, Causes and Solutions

Abstract

harsh locations and downhole conditions pose severe challenges for ensuring safe and long-lasting intact well conditions. Well integrity is a crucial issue ina well life cycle. Failure to obtain and maintain adequate well barriers integrity could led to catastrophic events, negative financial consequences, and environmental impacts, such as groundwater contamination, gas leakage to the atmosphere, and fluid spills and seepage at the surface.Wells must be designed to ensure well integrity, i.e. that the fluids stay contained within the wellbore, and that the surrounding subsurface layers, including aquifers, are protected. Well integrity is a result of technical, operational and organizational barriers applied, with the intention to contain and control the reservoir fluid and well pressures.Managing well integrity is essential to economically develop oil and gas resources while preserving the environment and assuring safety to personnel, by focusing on the development of systems and processes to manage the well operations and interventions to assure well integrity with many claims to have a workable system that verifies and confirms the status of wells with suspect integrity. In this thesis, an investigation on well integrity failure lead to major accident, accompanied with cause analysis discussion.