ITF, the Industry Technology Facilitator, has started a joint industry pptoject (JIP) with Tullow Oil to establish a comprehensive, global wells and completions reliability database and is urging more operators to join the project.
The JIP's aim is to tackle efficiency and safety issues associated with well integrity through the creation and management of a global library of well data, to provide users with accurate and reliable information about a broader range of well types than is currently available.
Existing wells databases tend to be subject specific, focusing on, for example, electric submersible pumps, says ITF.
The proposed database will be more comprehensive, covering a broad range of well types and the associated construction components, such as tubulars, completion components, wellhead and Christmas tree items.
This will help wells to be constructed using factual reliability information, allowing more accurate assumptions to be made in relation to a number of conditions, such as mean time to failure for completion components, prediction of workover or intervention requirements, flow assurance, scaling, corrosion, and tendency for hydrate formation.
The initiative is being led by Simon Sparke, group head of well integrity for Tullow Oil.
“Over time this will develop into a vast library of wells and their associated parts, so that a range of interrogations can be carried out to identify which components provide the most reliable operating efficiencies and under what operating circumstances," he says.
"Furthermore, I hope that existing databases can be knitted together into the new package to provide a significantly more powerful tool.
Discussions are underway with data librarians and, to date, more than 10 operating companies have shown interest in joining the project.