Arthur Cordes served in the Marine Corps before building a successful career for himself in the hazardous waste removal industry. He was the equipment operator/foreman at the G.E. Fuqua Farm Orphaned Oil Wells. As foreman, he oversaw a seven-man crew at an abandoned well site.
Arthur Cordes has twenty years’ experience in the hazardous waste removal industry across the Midwest, South Central, and Rocky Mountain regions. He has eighteen years’ experience working in the USEPA ERRS and USACE programs as superintendent and foreman. Generally, an abandoned oil well has a surface casing that extends to below lowermost drinking water aquifer, and a set of production strings that run tot eh the target formation. The annuli between formation and casing, and between the various casing strings is cemented to an extent. Abandonment plugs have unique tailored cement types that may be supported by mechanical plugs. For a well to be effectively sealed, a stepwise procedure that addresses the removal of equipment and tools, cleaning the wellbore, and plugging and testing have to be carried out.
Arthur Cordes knows that the first step in sealing an abandoned well is removing all existing tools from the well. This is done by using a conventional workover rig or existing drilling with full capacity to pull out all downhole equipment from the well, such as downhole pumps, production tubing, and packers. If the tools cannot be successfully retrieved because of stuck equipment, then the oil well abandonment strategy has to be revised and approved by concerned authorities.
Source: https://hub.globalccsinstitute.com/publications/long-term-integrity-co2-storage-%E2%80%93-well-abandonment/2-well-plugging-and-abandonment
Arthur Cordes has twenty years’ experience in the hazardous waste removal industry across the Midwest, South Central, and Rocky Mountain regions. He has eighteen years’ experience working in the USEPA ERRS and USACE programs as superintendent and foreman. Generally, an abandoned oil well has a surface casing that extends to below lowermost drinking water aquifer, and a set of production strings that run tot eh the target formation. The annuli between formation and casing, and between the various casing strings is cemented to an extent. Abandonment plugs have unique tailored cement types that may be supported by mechanical plugs. For a well to be effectively sealed, a stepwise procedure that addresses the removal of equipment and tools, cleaning the wellbore, and plugging and testing have to be carried out.
Arthur Cordes knows that the first step in sealing an abandoned well is removing all existing tools from the well. This is done by using a conventional workover rig or existing drilling with full capacity to pull out all downhole equipment from the well, such as downhole pumps, production tubing, and packers. If the tools cannot be successfully retrieved because of stuck equipment, then the oil well abandonment strategy has to be revised and approved by concerned authorities.
Source: https://hub.globalccsinstitute.com/publications/long-term-integrity-co2-storage-%E2%80%93-well-abandonment/2-well-plugging-and-abandonment
