Plug and Abandonment Solution for Oilfield Decommissioning in the North Sea

Abstract

Abstract When wells have come to the end of their lives, it becomes necessary to plug and abandon them and return the seabed to its original condition. In the UK sector of the Central North Sea (CNS), an operator managed 6 fields comprising a total of 30 subsea wells in 7 clusters, required to be plugged and abandoned. These fields are among many that are coming to the decommission stage, with the over-riding requirement from the UK government being that of no leakage of hydrocarbons to the environment or between separate permeable geological zones. The operator standards required the placement of two cement barriers of a minimum of 100-ft each for zonal isolation. The preferred route was to find the annular portion of the barrier by interpretation of ultrasonic imaging tool in combination with the cement bond (CBL) wireline logs used for cement evaluation service, then to set a 500-ft plug inside the casing opposite that zone. In the case that no barrier quality cement was identified in the annulus, section milling of the casing was undertaken to expose 100-ft of formation over which cement was placed. A number of challenges were faced to design the cement slurry prior to the logging results. The setting depth may only have been confirmed a few hours before the cement job. To cover the possible setting depths and temperature ranges, laboratory testing consisted of performing temperature sensitivity tests on base slurries designed with a wide temperature range retarder, but still optimizing the system to minimize wait on cement (WOC) time. A specialized high magnesium resistance (HMR) cement system that provides long-term zonal isolation and protects against cement degradation was identified as being best solution. The HMR cement is a blend of blast furnace cement and fly-ash, which reduces the cement permeability and limits the effect of alkaline brine corrosion. Optimal plug placement was also required for long-term isolation. Specialized plug placement software that accounts for in-pipe and annular contamination, and fluid interface matching during pulling out of the plug was utilised. The slurry design and emplacement best practices will be summarized in this paper. These subsea wells have been successfully plugged and abandoned by laying temporary, primary, secondary and environmental cement barriers by several different methods: inside casing, across section-milled windows, multi-annular, through scaled production tubing and through coiled tubing according to each particular well's condition. Success ratio was exceptionally high with all the long term barrier themselves being flawlessly placed and verified without any repeat job being required.