Events

Speaker:  Dr. Jesus De Andrade, Post Doc in the Department of Petroleum Engineering and Applied Geophysics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Title of Seminar: “Cement sheath integrity during thermal cycling”

Abstract: Casing cement is among the most important well barrier elements in the well, both during production/injection and after well abandonment. It is however well-known that the integrity of the cement sheath can degrade significantly during normal production operations, such as shut-down/start-up, stimulations, workovers, etc., caused by time-varying loads in the well. This research work addresses the potential breach of long-term well integrity caused by temperature cycling in the wellbore. In that sense, a novel laboratory set-up was developed to investigate deformations and fractures in a scaled down section of a wellbore under confining pressure. The deformation and failure in the cement sheath is characterized while running the experiments and inspecting the sample between the temperature cycles with X-ray computer tomography. The experimental work comprised the design, development and construction of this novel testing apparatus. The use of CT scanning as part of this testing has been a pioneering work. The experiments conducted gave new insights into the formations of permeable flow paths in the cement sheath. Another research area has involved the numerical modeling of casing-cement-formation well sections, focusing on the evaluation of different well operating loads, physical properties and geometric characteristics, on the cement sheath integrity.

Biography:   Jesus De Andrade is a mechanical engineer with over 10 years experience in teaching, training and technical services to the industry related to energy, oil & gas production and boosting systems. He is currently a Post Doc in the Department of Petroleum Engineering and Applied Geophysics at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where he also obtained his PhD degree, in 2015. De Andrade currently addresses R&D challenges within the areas of well integrity, novel technologies for cost-effective drilling and well operations, and subsea production systems. He hold a Professor position at the Simon Bolivar University, Venezuela, from 2009 to 2011. Since then, he has also worked in technical areas such as model-based production management, multiphase flow separation and turbomachinery.