The case of unawareness Vs. understanding
What are the consequences of knowing the outcome of your cement job?
Most people would say that knowing the outcome allows the connection of execution and design with job models and assumptions — the path of perfection. To clarify, knowing the cement bond is just part of the “outcome” and goes beyond completion to the well’s production performance.
For other people, knowing the outcome is a waste. Hey! I am not saying this is wrong. If economics is correct and then say so, It might not be elegant, but waste is waste. In my experience, economics is never correct, not because of the concept itself as a rational decision-making tool, but because it tends to be shortsighted.
In my case, due to my background in well cementing, I like the notion of learning from our performance, that beautiful concept of the DEE cycle, Design – Execute – Evaluate. And It goes beyond reaching the true meaning of a Cementing Expert…
What is that exactly?
A person who knows the basics and repeatedly deploys existing “best practices”? Or a person able to scientifically understand situations and develop the practices that essentially lead to success?
You know my answer… and anytime I have done it this way, success becomes part of the organization as a collective achievement.
On many occasions supporting customers, I have said: “My actual job is to become obsolete” in an organization, and my ultimate goal is to develop and transfer knowledge. In simpler words, the wells are what they are, but success starts at the surface with ALL the people involved.
Now, what about those so-called cementing experts who exploit the knowledge of cementing like a mystery and art! One said to me once… knowledge that only belongs to them. I have seen these individuals, and despite what they might think, they are never truly trusted by their own organizations, always living in fear, trying to blame everybody else for anything and making things seem more complicated than they indeed are.
Well, it is up to you to decide, you know who has been appointed to “support” you… Is this person making you stronger or weaker? Is success or failure yours?
Let me tell you a short story.
This company at some point was the most successful cementing company in this field … then in the following campaign, the customer asked for proof of that success… this company said: no problem, we have been pumping cement downhole like any other without any “complaints.” As you can imagine, proving success was more difficult than this company anticipated. With the same practice as before, barely any well section was properly cemented… the ratio was so low that this company quickly became the worst.
I have to explain why I put “complaints” in quotation marks… I will put it this way… I am sure the well was complaining of the failed cement jobs but were we listening to the well’s message? At any time? For instance, After cementing? During or after completion? Or During or after production? Not so sure.
Is your successful cementing a case of knowledge or ignorance?
In any case, I am here to help… better cementing for all!
Cheers
L. Diaz
Hi Lenin,
Welcome back. Nice post as usual.
I have to say that I like your phrase ‘‘Just to clarify, knowing the cement bond is just part of the “outcome,” it goes beyond all the way to the well’s production performance’’ because it summarizes many things in one sentence.
In general, I think a successful cementing job is wrongly limited and associated to the immediate results (during the execution and evaluation’s logs). It is common to see that the long-term integrity of the well is not considered. Here I should precise in certain regions others may have experienced something else. This is maybe due to an ‘‘unawareness’’ or a “misunderstanding’’ of long-term risks and costs; which include continuous remedial jobs costs or a complete abandonment of the well (the loss of production), or it is done on purpose (I hope I am just exaggerating).
For me cementing success, in addition to the DEE cycle, starts during the conception and planning phases of the well or project. The designs have to meet all the objectives not only the short term but also the long-term objectives of the well, this includes the production of the well and the life of the well. This is to say that cementing professionals should aim that and be ‘‘a person able to scientifically understand situations and develop the practices that essentially leads to success’’.
Regards
Thanks Bikouyi, always glad to see your contribution. This time in particular with a more kind of deep-thinking discussion about proper cementing engineering support. With few key elements in primary cementing that can be easily forgotten without the right person beside you.
Cheers
L. Diaz
Hi Lenin,
Happy new year, best wishes for this 2019.
Reading again your post, I can stop thinking about cementing professionals’ Commitment and Responsibility.
Well-known global events (no need to list them here) related to cement failure have shown that it is more about the well integrity through it life than just having a hard cement in a shoe track for example, but in some regions, unfortunately, the message is still not well understood. Probably it is because, cementing professionals do not explain it clearly or we do not push harder for it or something else, many reasons can be listed. I should say here that I am not just talking about adds or cement quality issues, I am talking about the cementing’s basics like designing and executed a job without a clear job’s objective defined, understood and agreed (all parties). For example, it is common to read in a program ‘‘providing zonal isolation or having hard cement in the shoe track or around the shoe’’ as an objective, sometimes I wonder, can it be more specific? Is it realistic? Achievable under well’s conditions/environment? Or does it make sense at all? Etc… maybe yes. But should we just leave the client to define it? Can we help in defining a reasonable objective? etc…
Let use an example, similar to the one you gave. I also know a company claiming to have really good results in cementing jobs despite the fact that only the production casing is sometimes evaluated (not all by the way) with ”questionable results (at least the client accept it)”. The client decides when and were to run logs to evaluate the jobs (they have their reasons). In the end, it is common to see the final well schematic represented without cement behind most of the casings, due to losses and other events, and remedial jobs are expensive. In these cases, How do the cementing professionals make sure that the job’s objectives were met?
Recently, another example, the same company designed a superficial PA using a gas migration control cement slurry, which was difficult to justify technically because there was no need for it. Let avoid the details, in the end, the client agreed to pump it. Don’t get me wrong I am not judging or saying that the ”making revenue” is not important, the point here is the cementing professionals responsibility and commitment to deliver an excellent service/job, or when they have a client who may not know about cementing, or when they don’t know more than their client does. Can we talk about ethics? Knowledge or ignorance? or revenue oriented mind?
Regards
L. B.
Hi Bikouyi, thanks for your very opportune contribution here.
The Oil Industry, particularly upstream, is a very diverse mixture of people from different backgrounds and level of expertise, most of the time working in adverse or sometime impossible situations, that are either naturally prevailing or most commonly man-made. This can be very confusing if we are not too careful … To do the right thing, we need to implement a guiding system to keep us pointing in the right direction … for me, there are two compasses: the well itself (If we listen, it never lies) and our Engineer’s Oath (Our beloved profession) … Choose your compass, keep it with you and you will never fail
Cheers
L. Diaz