It's Monday already? Damn. I must have lost a day on that other job that took forever that ended up with us doing nothing. The casing got stuck. These things happen. And yes, a P&A is a plug and abandon. It's what is done to wells that are no longer producing enough to be economically viable. The production casing (or tubing) is filled with cement at certain intervals as required by the government, principally to ensure production zones and water tables are isolated from one another.
How does casing get stuck? Usually, the hole collapses at some point. Imagine a hole drilled with a 6.25" bit that is several thousand feet long. Now picture that somewhere in the middle of that open hole section the sides fall in somewhere above where the bottom of the casing has been run to. In essence, the collapse has pinched the casing and now it can't be moved up or down. You can try to free the casing, but success is hit or miss. This doesn't mean the casing is totally lost, but the remedies are hardly quick and easy at that point. At this point, the point at which the casing is stuck can be figured from how the casing weight behaves when attempts are made to move it. Then the casing can be shot off above that point with explosives and the casing from there up can be retrieved. What's left in the hole can attempt to be retrieved by fishing for it, which is kind of like regular fishing, but not really. If fishing fails to retrieve the rest of the casing then a plug can be set and the well side-tracked. That means they drill a new hole from the plug (where they got stuck) to the depth they want alongside the original hole which still has the stuck casing in it. The portion above the stuck point is still the original hole of course. There's no point in drilling the entire thing over, just the part that's now unusable.
Anyway, if the terms I use don't make sense, you can find a lot of them here. Wait, this whole post didn't make much sense. There was no theme or point to it. It was some rambling about what happens when other things happen. Yeah, too bad.
Anyway, I'm thinking about this MP3 player. It's not an iPod, which I consider a good thing and it's got the features I would want in a music player. But, it falls into the category of reasonably priced things that I just don't need. The only time I would use it would be on an airplane when I have nothing else to do except sleep, which is what I would probably be doing.
2 comments:
Sounds like "reasonably priced things I just don't need" is a case for inaction. Sleep is good.
True, the rest of the post rambled, but it was interesting. Question: How does one reconcile the need for P&A at various depths if the casing breaks and you have a collapse above where you would otherwise want to or need to plug?
No brainer. It's so cheap. Go for it. If you don't like it or it breaks down, then ditch it and wait for the next generation of iPod.
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