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Well Integrity
The evolving role of
well integrity
Image Credit : Adobe Stock
At the Offshore Well Intervention Conference, Middle East and North Africa 2021, an expert panel discussed the pressures shaping the well integrity market, and the factors that will drive change for the discipline in the future. Robert Daniels reports.
OWI MENA 2021 was held virtually due to the pandemic.
OST TURAL YUSOBOV, senior engineer, Well Integrity at ADNOC, was joined by Fayez Issa, group well integrity advisor for ADNOC, who commented, “Well integrity has gone through different stages. If you go back 30-40 years it did not exist, there was minimum knowledge. But then after many incidents and major catastrophes, the knowledge of well integrity has become a vital aspect of oil and gas. It changed a lot 10 years ago after the events on the Macondo field in the Gulf of Mexico. Before, people could happily ask things like, do we really need to log cement? Is it important to see variations? Do we need special requirements for a gas lift? Additionally, a lot of things were done at minimum cost. Now if a well is planned to last for 30 years it has to be designed to last that long, a change partially due to the environmental challenges and more stringent regulations.”
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Nowadays well integrity is a much larger concern for the industry, emphasised Neil Ferguson, business and sales development manager of well intervention and integrity at Expro Group, who noted that Expro now has 50% of its portfolio dedicated to this discipline, whereas 20 years ago it was just 20%. Exemplifying why well integrity and surveillance is such an important topic in today’s world, Mustafa Adel Amer, well
After many incidents and catastrophes the knowledge of well integrity has become a vital aspect of oil and gas.”
integrity focal point at BAPETCO, said, “Ten years ago BAPETCO started doing well integrity management systems which accelerated the building up of knowledge. But unfortunately after the crash in 2014, the company took the decision to save costs and stop things such as corrosion logs etc. Now after six years the company is going to pay more to fix the unknown causes of corrosion and will have to probe the wells.” While the discipline has grown significantly over the last few decades, the panellists noted that there was still room for improvement. Ferguson suggested that there was perhaps a bit of a disconnect from integrity as it was so often bound up as part of drilling and production. The participants suggested that if well integrity is kept within these departments it might not perform its role as effectively, but having well integrity as a separate entity within companies would empower it to do so.
