A ghost from the past started hunting me when I went through my files. Ashamed of what I discovered I decided to tell everyone, especially young engineers, what not to do when setting a cement plug.
A few weeks back I was in the process of re-organizing my external hard drive. If you are like me, you have one of those external discs where you keep all your "work stuff." My disc literally contains my entire professional life work.
Sometimes I am amazed by the stuff that pops-out when I search for something; exams from my early days as a drilling fluid engineer or as a cementer, CVs of candidates that I interviewed over a decade ago… you name it...
So, I decided to organize my hard drive with these objectives in mind:
One folder containing quite a few megabytes is labeled "Investigations." There I keep lessons learned, technical and safety alerts and investigation reports from my former teams.
The folder sadly has documents from each and every single district I have worked.
A Safety instructor once told me, "company standards are written in blood." Today I understand what he meant. Standards trail behind failures and accidents, and organizations and governments try to prevent their re-occurrence.
While organizing this folder, I realized that grouping the investigations by their topic instead of "by district" serves me far better in my current role as a well integrity "expert".
Where the events took place is no longer relevant for me. The important thing is what those investigations addressed, so I can show young engineers how to deal with certain well situations, and how to prevent the occurrence of similar events.
Reading tip: Free water in Cement: Why is it critical?
When I focused on the investigations related to service delivery who had caused downtime or other types of "red money" (wasted money), the one ghost that chased me from everywhere I have worked was "The Failure of cement plugs".
It is embarrassing how the reports reveal that the same mistakes are made over and over again in places as distant as Cabinda, Angola and Offshore Guyana, South America.
Free guide: The most common causes for leaks in oil wells and 8 questions to consider before you select solution.
To stop the feeling of shame, I will give you a quick summary of the more common causes of job failures when setting a cement plug:
Mostly due to the use of non-pressurized mud balances.
The guidelines attached to this article (see also below) reveals more details on the reasons behind these failures and suggests how you ensure a successful cement job.
If you follow them, I am certain that your chances of getting it right the first time will increase significantly.
Best of Luck!
PS: If you have additional recommendations let us know in the comments field below, we will be glad to add them up and comment.
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