RIASSUNTO
The paper presents progress made in research and development (R&D) of emerging plasma-based technology for well intervention applications. The technology potential for various upstream applications has been presented at some other SPE conferences (March and September 2015 and January 2016). Current development phase, which is intended for well plug and abandonment (P&A) operations, allows planning applications relevant to modern well intervention needs such as slot recovery, re-entry, lateral drilling and several others.
The experimental basis uses a project plan, which is adequate for development tasks and is periodically updated based on the achieved results. This paper presents results of the latest experiments which focused on the evaluation of cement removal ability and quantification of plasma radial reach.
The paper includes several sections. The first section is Introduction, which briefly summarizes the background of the technology as well as introduces the scope of the experiments. The second section Methods and Procedures explains experimental set-ups, defines samples and procedures used for analysis. The third section Results and Observation describes in detail the main results obtained during extensive testing of the radial reach as well as the results obtained during experiments with three different types of water- and oil- based mud samples. Special attention is given to the result of the plasma impact on casing in case of eccentric position of tubing. The last section summarizes obtained results and presents the possible benefits of plasma-based technique on well intervention applications.
Currently, the research team performs development of infrastructure and bottom-hole assembly (BHA) for tubing milling for onshore and offshore field trials. Moreover, high-pressure (HP) testing well for BHA tubing milling operation tests in high pressure of water/brine environment is also under development. The testing environment will serve for the proof of the system and should confirm the ability of testing in field conditions.