Gain insight into how to create a best practice Well Integrity Management System (WIMS)
Part 1 – Understanding what you need
Spreadsheet based well integrity management has been with us for many years, and it is understood that WIMS as we know it today, probably made its first appearance around 2004.
Today there are about six separate and off the shelf systems offering plug and play concepts, with other packages being built and tested as we speak. I believe these new packages will probably offer state of the art software solutions built to the latest regulatory requirements and be flexible and easily adaptable to existing well data storage. Crucially though, they will most likely add great value to the well integrity management process.
At least two major operators have built their own systems which are tailored to their specific global policies and documentation requirements, in an area where the off she shelf product could not compete.
Finally, Excel can be adapted to provide pass/fail criteria of wells, but will generally struggle to convert the output into easy to manipulate diagrams and reports and potentially suffers from cut and paste issues copying spreadsheet errors which are difficult to monitor. Though, I have seen one middle east client achieve a working Excel system with excellent results.
The regulatory requirements directed by ISO, API, Norsok, OLF and O&GUK gain clarity, depth and scope with each revision, and as such the WIMS providers have adapted accordingly.
Understanding what each of these packages is capable of delivering, is key to managing your own expectations. But having the WIMS system capacity to collate, assimilate and report on well construction, operation and intervention data, is much like an onion; you want to be able to peel back layers and visualise well data from a range of different perpsecitves, that provide the well status of today compared to the originaly well status at point of construction. This should help determine how and where degradation has occurred, what are the risks of today and how can this best be managed, at the well, platform, pad or field.
As a centralised repository of wells data, the software must above all else be user friendly and easy to manipulate, providing one source of truth. So, in short it will not provide anwers to all your problems, but if properly managed, the system will tell you where youre problems are, with what associate risks and perhaps even which wells need the most attention. Armed with this information, you will satisfy company KPI’s, regulatory needs and provide you with sufficient information to support and justify repairs and remediation.
In the last few years years I have personally managed the entire tendering process, data loading and implementation of several WIMS, this is inconjunction with the writing of the associated policy documentation to manage the system through the lifecycles.
What I offer clients is impartial advice and project management experience, coupled with many years hands on practise in the field of well integrity and uniquely as a co-author of ISO-16530, this is fully supported with many years global, practical field experience giving the knowledge of what can and cannot be done.
