Techno-Economic Analysis of Using Palm Oil Fuel Ash and Quartz for Plugging and Abandonment of Hydrocarbon Well

Abstract There are large number of wells that need to be permanently plugged and Abandoned (P&A). As P&A operations do not provide any return on investment, developing cost-effective operations methods is very important. Therefore, it is essential to use cost-effective plug-and-abandonment technology without compromising the operation's scope. In this work, Quartz and Palm oil fuel ash (POFA) was used to reduce the cost associated with plugging and abandonment of hydrocarbon wells by reducing the settling time and improving the well integrity by minimizing the shrinkage associated with conventional cement. These materials were selected based on their properties, Quartz a thermodynamically stable material, enables the formulated solid to withstand temperature and not shrink with time despite the temperature and the force applied. The sieve size used for the Quartz was 300 microns and the total gram of 571.6g of the Quartz was added to the cement mixture. POFA possesses a pozzolanic property and a sieve size of 150 microns and 285.88 grams was used for the mixture with the mix ratio of M7 (1:4:8) and M25 (1:1: 2) A total gram of 143g of class G cement was added to the mixture, the water-cement ratio of 0.4 for the mixture of M7 and the water-cement ratio of 0.4 was use for M25. The rheological property and mechanical properties of the formulated slurry were analyzed and compared to that of Class G cement slurry. The Addition of the material (Quartz and POFA) to the class G cement increases the compressive strength from 85 psi to 182 psi and the setting time of 2:20min to reach 50 Bearden consistency. Economic Analysis using cost estimation method was done and the result shows that the cost associated with the usage of the formulated slurry was lower than the usage of class G cement for plugging and abandonment.