Epoxy Resin Ends 45 Days of Nonproductive Time in Deepwater Wells: Case History

Abstract

A major cause of remedial operations from production liner cementing is not achieving isolation from reservoir to surface. Occurrences increase in wells with inclinations of approximately 90° and necessitate isolating areas close to the liner overlap because of the difficulty reaching satisfactory standoff of the liner in relation to the wellbore or poor mud conditioning before the cement operation. During cement slurry displacement, a preferred circulation path for the cement slurry may cause poor or even nonexistent isolation. An even greater challenge is remediating this type of failure, because leakages at the top of liners may have extremely low injectivity. Conventional remediation systems, such as Class G cement slurries, are often ineffective because of the high concentration of solids present within these systems. Applying an epoxy resin (a solids-free system) combined with best practices of plug positioning to restore well integrity was achieved on the first attempt, ending 45 days of nonproductive time (NPT) for a deepwater operator.