Well Integrity Monitoring: Key Risks and Solutions

Annulus pressure monitoring is critical, if the risk of financially and environmentally costly well integrity incidents are to be avoided, on all producing oil and gas wells.

This is because any change in annulus pressure (beyond that caused by temperature effects) is usually the first indication of a well integrity failure.

It's therefore incredible annulus pressure is still most commonly monitored using a gauge located as shown (above left) on an instrument flange behind one or two gate valves. The main problems with this approach are:

• When gate valves leak ( as they regularly do) , the usual 'solution' is to pump grease into them. As a result, when gate valves are serviced, they often look like the one pictured (above right). If either of the gate valves upstream of the pressure gauge looked anything like the one above right, do you think the pressure gauge data can be relied on.
• Increasingly these days, annulus pressure data is ( quite rightly) included in the 'i - field' infrastructures, that automatically gather and monitor critical well and production facilities on a 24/7 basis. Unfortunately, this means the gate valves upstream of the gauge have to be open at all times and the (relatively flimsy) gauge becomes a permanent part of the well barrier envelope. As a result, the race for data (even, for the reasons described above, poor reliability data) has itself has actually increased the risk of a well integrity incident.

PTC have a field proven solution to these challenges, our VR Sense System. It now has a track record of over 7 years in various locations worldwide . For details please visit the following link: https://ptc.as/solutions/wellhead/vr-sense-r