Bad Cement Job

After what seems like months of crazy stressful nights I finally get a break. We finish our last well and skidded the rig over 30 ft. to do the next well. We have so far finished half of that second well without problems. Until today that is, with just over 10,000 ft to go.

Tonight’s problem is from the fact that when we ran our casing, (to keep the whole from collapsing while we do the lateral section) 600 barrels of mud and all of our cement disappeared!!! It’s a little hard to lose that much fluid but it does happen. When the casing was being run to bottom one of the many formations started to push back, in what is called a squeeze. When the formation squeezes the hole there isn’t any room between the pipe and the wall so that means there is no space for the mud and cement to return to surface.  With no way out the pressure builds and builds and eventually finds the path of least resistance.  We just don’t know where that is.  It could have traveled along a fracture  or fault in the rock, the formation could have absorbed some of it, it may be trapped below a hard spot and spreading out slowly like a very lumpy balloon.  We don’t know where it went.  So now we are trying to figure out if enough cement is left in place for us to drill ahead.   To do that we are running a wire line in the well with a temperature probe.

Wire lining is when a probe or logging tool is lowered in to the hole with an electric cable, records data and then is pulled back out.  It can measure the temperature, density, or even the radioactivity of the rocks.   This time we are running a temperature probe because the cement we use to glue the outside of the casing to the rock gets hot, very hot, when it is curing. That is what we hope to see in the log. One problem that would prevent us from seeing that is that wireline tools normally only work to about a 55-60° angle, our well is currently at about a 90° angle.  We will find out soon if the tools can even get down to the point we need to see what we need to see.

If we can see the cement and there is enough of it we can drill ahead, do the lateral part of the well and be out of here in two or three days. But if there isn’t enough cement or we can’t see it we may be here for a while as they try different things. If the log comes back with evidence of cement but it is not enough or in the right spot the easy fix will be to do a second cement job and add more to the hole.  If we can’t get the probe down far enough to see or there is several hundred feet of cement in the hole we may have to drill thru it to bottom and then pump a second cement job. Neither is a good option.

In other news I think I am starting to get the hang of all the responsibilities of the new job!