Best Practices in Well Abandonment: A Contractor's Perspective

TOPCORP presents Luke J. Plants, Chief Operating Officer with Plants & Goodwin Inc. to provide insight on issues, considerations, and the process used when successfully decommissioning a well.

Skill Level: Intermediate Advanced

Length: 1 hour

Language: English

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Since the first commercial oil well in 1859, there are conservative estimates of at least 3 ½ million oil and gas wells drilled in North America since then. The Energy Information Administration states in the US alone, there were less than a million producing wells in 2017. Since there was little or no regulation for tracking wells until the 1900's, no one knows how many abandoned or orphan wells exist. When found and identified by environmental and liability issues, how are these wells decommissioned?

Vice President Luke Plants of Plants and Goodwin, Inc., industry experts in plugging and abandonment operations, will provide insight on issues, considerations, and the process when successfully decommissioning a well.

"The abandonment process as it happens 'on the ground' is often widely different than how it is perceived by decision makers," states Plants. "It is my goal to help explain how obstacles, both legal and monetary, can be removed when stakeholders have clear, open lines of communication."

Plants will discuss the development of and types of contracts to initiate plugging operations, obligations and responsibilities of involved parties, onsite equipment, methods and materials used, and possible issues encountered during and after the proces.

TOP Energy Training is an educational consortium composed of Colorado School of Mines, The Pennsylvania State University and The University of Texas at Austin. TOPCORP is our flagship program, with hundreds of regulators and policymakers completing the four-module curriculum of basic petroleum technology training. We provide training courses for professionals working in a variety of energy-related careers. TOPCORP's mission is to train regulatory and policy-making personnel involved in oil and gas development. Our goal is to make sure that your time spent completing our courses (whether in an online environment or classroom environment) is an efficient investment in keeping you at the TOP of your game professionally. For more information on TOPCORP, please visit the TOP Energy website.

Who is this for?

Energy regulators, those working in the oil and gas field

What will you learn?

Considerations for oil and gas well plugging operations, contracts required, equipment, methods used

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