Abstract
With the increase in Plug and Abandonment activities worldwide, Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Companies are always looking for ways to reduce rig time and overall costs involved in such activities. One of the plug and abandonment objectives is to seal the well and isolate permanently. This requires milling a window inside the casing to set a cement plug to seal the reservoir and prevent hydrocarbon leakage to surface or hydrocarbon movement between different formations, as well as preventing contaminations of aquifers.
In most of the wells, where the cement plug is to be set there are two overlapping casing strings. In standard Plug and Abandonment applications, this will need pilot milling of the inner casing string from surface (couple of 100s to 1000s meters) to the required depth and then section milling a window in the outer casing string, then opening the formation to set a cement plug and seal the reservoir.
Responding to such application, the plug and abandonment research and development team from the service company carried out several studies and conducted multiple simulations to optimize milling performance, which resulted in a new mill cutting structure design called WavEdge technology.
New cutting structure is enhancing the performance of milling by achieving increase in ROP, Durability and getting better swarf quality for easy handling.
