Abstract
Over a number of years production casing leaks have been one of the major issues of oil well operation in Russia. Experts believe that this issue is one of the main reasons of oil well shifting from the active well stock into temporarily shut-in wells.
The share of shut-in wells in Russia has reached 15% of the total oil well stock without any significant changes in recent years.
It is evident that conventional solutions providing for smaller size production casing running and cementing to surface are not cost efficient.
Operators are surely interested in alternative solutions being less material, tool and time consuming.
In this context, solid expandable systems deserve close attention as their application will enable to reduce both work costs and nonproductive time.
Operator's benefits from using solid expandable systems for production casing leak repairs include:
Reduction of production decline rates at brown fields;
Extension of field producing life;
Reduction of shut-in well servicing costs.
Solid expandable tubular systems significantly differ from each other in the design of expandable tubing (patches), the expansion method, and, correspondingly, the complex of equipment applied.
This article describes one of the most common solid expandable tubular systems, presents an analysis of its application geography, and provides a case study of this system application in Russia.
