Summary

Oil leaks were found in two wells of the Big Hill caverns field. According to the field observations, two instances of casing damage occurred at the depth of the interbed between the caprock bottom and salt top. A three dimensional finite element model, which contains wellbore element blocks and allows each cavern to be configured individually, was constructed to investigate the wellbore damage mechanism. The causes of the damaged casing segments are a result of vertical and horizontal movements of the interbed between the caprock and salt dome. For remediation, a smaller size of steel casing needs to be inserted into the damaged steel casing. The horizontal deformation of the damaged steel casing at the interbed will limit the outside diameter of inserted steel casing. The sizes of inserted casings for the remediation of the wells are predicted in this paper.

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