Baker Hughes announced yesterday (July 20) the commercial release of its Integrity eXplorer™ cement evaluation service: a radical change in the evaluation of the cement integrity of oil and gas wells.
Existing evaluation techniques, which have been used for over 30 years, are acoustic-based and may not provide the accuracy needed when faced with some of today’s challenges. This new electromagnetic-acoustic technology allows operators to directly assess the integrity of cement bonds in any current wellbore environment or cement mixture.
Operators in the upstream sector rely on the accuracy of cement-bond logs to make critical decisions that can affect long-term well integrity and the environment. While cement compressive strength has typically been used as a key indicator of cement quality, today’s challenging environments require a more detailed assessment. The Integrity eXplorer service provides operators with accurate and comprehensive data about the properties of the respective cement – thereby enabling them to make critical decisions to help protect their assets, reduce non-productive time, and minimise unnecessary remediation.
“In our role as innovation leaders, we realize that applying yesterday’s technology to today’s challenges may not meet our customer’s emerging needs” said Mariano Gargiulo, vice president of Baker Hughes’ Wireline Services business. “This is especially true in today’s demanding environments that can test the accuracies of traditional evaluation methods. The Integrity eXplorer service provides answers that were previously unattainable.”
The Integrity eXplorer service is the latest example of Baker Hughes’ strategy to improve well efficiency, optimize production and increase ultimate recovery.