Development of a cement repository to monitor long-term cement properties to minimize well integrity incidents and environmental impact of oil, gas and underground storage wells Grant uri icon

abstract

  • The principal objective of this project is to minimize well integrity incidents by creating a state of art database of wellbore cements properties used in Middle East. This will be realized by measuring critical set of properties for short and long-term, allowing scientists to understand and predict the actual and future wellbore integrity for oil, gas, geothermal, underground storage and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) wells, enabling a more accurate environmental prediction of well impact, especially for sensitive areas and applications. The temperature and pressure range selected within this project are focused to replicate the Middle East fields conditions. On the long run, this project will provide the scientific interface through which technical information on cement properties can be obtained, evaluated, quality-assured, documented, and distributed; the exchange of data can be promoted and facilitated, and high-quality analyses of complex data can be performed to synthesize information used in evaluating environmental issues. It is common today to use Finite Element Analysis (FEM) combined with experimental stress analysis to assess well integrity, but very few details exist about the input parameters of the cements used for the numerical studies, particularly after a long period of time. As a result, most of the numerical study will offer inaccurate results when the cement recipe used for that particular study is unknown. A cement repository connected to a cement database to hold cement samples for up to 3 years will help solving the above limitations. All information will be available on an online website, whereas the cement samples will be kept in a special â cement bankâ or cement repository, holding the cement samples under constant in situ pressure, but outside temperature variations, mimicking setting depth and production scenarios similar to those wells from Middle East. The cement recipes will be collected from various operators in Middle East and Qatar, then the chemicals will be purchased and the cement recipes will be mixed in the laboratory according to API method being followed by the storage at the OU..........

date/time interval

  • 2019 - 2023