Knowledge and Experiences Combined under One Hood: Lessons Learned from Peninsular Malaysia Well Abandonment Campaign

Abstract

Operators, regulators, industry experts and service providers had lately landed onto a common ground on the needs for a strategic late field life management focusing on well abandonment planning and execution. With increased number of depleted well strings after exhaustive attempts to unlock the remaining well potential, this topic is gaining a spotlight day by day which triggers the industry to spare their attention to find the best solutions in getting the most out of the campaign. This paper will highlight the practical experiences and capture the lessons learned obtained while executing well abandonment campaign in Peninsular Malaysia waters demonstrating a quick learning curve and agile workflow in achieving a safe and world class project execution. Some best practices will be also proposed to strengthen the technical assurance, project governance as well as enhancing the safety features. Lessons learned gained are categorized under seven lenses namely cap rock identification and subsurface study, governance model, well and equipment preparation, perforation and cementing operation, cement bond logging and casing integrity evaluation, HSE related matters and also special topics where few examples and case studies will be presented for each. New insights, interpretation and efforts to improve the operational efficiency have led to the birth of new technology deployment, increased industrial networking for knowledge sharing and also integrated project management for cost optimization. As each abandonment campaign is unique in terms of threats and challenges, different approaches will be required to abandon the wells safely which steer the operators to be high on the learning curve and subsequently promote greater industrial collaboration. In essence, the lessons learned and insights gained throughout abandonment campaigns will keep accumulating with time to feed into the knowledge and experience vault. With proper project documentation, many success cases and best practices can be emulated both from technical and commercial point of view.