Dear Friends & Colleagues,
Please check-out the SPE Events Page for 1Q2023 including,
https://www.spe.org/events/en/2023/workshop/23atop/onshore-plugging-and-abandonment.html
- I must say that I was a little surprised and put-out to discover that, as a Canadian, I have to pay UK VAT on my registration fee.
Nevertheless, I am really looking forward to this workshop where SMEs from the Atlantic and, hopefully the entire Atlantic Rim will share their experiences with onshore P&A operations and some of the challenges that still need to be resolved.
Even if you are working offshore, there maybe something here for you too. As many of you know, the R&D Groups and JIPs that are evaluating and testing new technologies have a number of trials underway in onshore settings that can then be repurposed for application in more challenging and higher cost operating environments. However, it is not apparent that this information and the opportunities to participate in such programs is reaching all potentially interested parties.
As many know, I am hoping that this workshop will help advance the discussions about the need for the formation of a P&A Technical Section or if this is already (or could be) adequately addressed by the Well Integrity Technical Sections, especially if only more P&O types were to become involved. Maybe, all that is needed is a P&A Work Group under the WITS Umbrella.
I am sure that the TDs for Completion and P&F would love to hear your thoughts (here or via the parallel discussion on the Production Community Discussion Board).
There is also a major challenge in trying to assess the size of the challenge that the industry and Regulators are facing in defining how much of the unreported methane emissions are coming from suspended &/or from inadequately abandoned orphan wells. As discussed in one of the 2022 IOGCC - SPE joint webinars, many of those orphan well problems in the US date back for more than a century to times when P&A technologies and regulatory expectations were much less well refined. In some parts of the world, the orphan well inventory includes wells that were completed &/or deliberately sabotaged in former war zones (as I discovered when I worked in S.E. Asia). However, I believe that this topic sits squarely within the mandate of the Methane Emissions & Management Technical Section (https://connect.spe.org/methaneemissionsmanagement/home ). It will undoubtedly be an interesting stakeholder management challenge to sort-out which emissions are natural seepages and which belong to the various land users (agriculture; land-fills; coal mines; retail gas supply; mineral, oil & gas exploration and appraisal; or former O&G production operations). Hopefully, the new satellites will have the resolution to help sort this out or to justify multi-client fixed wing or drone fly-overs.
Regards
Bob
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Bob Pearson
Technical Director,
Glynn Resources Ltd.
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
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