Measurement of wellbore leakage in high‐pressure gas well based on the multiple physical signals and history data: Method, technology, and application

Abstract

Abstract Leakage is one of the most serious challenges for the safe production of high‐pressure gas wells for its high risks, including abnormal annular pressure, natural gas accumulation, and environment pollution, but available methods can hardly accurately measure the leakage type and depth, which are the key parameters for the rigless leakage repair and risk assessment. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to measure the leakage based on the characteristics, which combines qualitative and quantitative measurement together. Qualitative measurement considers the annular pressure, tubing pressure, liquid level, cement quality, and workover history. Quantitative measurement is determined by noise logging, electromagnetic logging, pressure logging, and temperature logging. The logging should be optimized according to the qualitative measurement. The method was successfully applied in high‐pressure gas well belonging to Tarim Oilfield. Two potential leakage types are provided based on the annular pressure, liquid level, cement quality, and workover history, including tubing leakage and linger hanger leakage. Based on the potential leakage types, the pressure difference, logging devices string, stopping length, and time are optimized to make the engineering logging reliable. Through measurement, two leakage points are found in tubing string. One is tubing body crack at the depth of 2724 m and the other is tubing thread leakage at the depth of 5211.7 m, which well matches the production data.

Keywords

• case analysis
• high‐pressure gas well
• leakage depth and type
• measurement method
• wellbore leakage