CHALLENGE

The well portfolio on the Norwegian Continental Shelf is aging, and an increasing number of new wells rely on re-using components from earlier constructions. Many of these components have already exceeded their typical design life of 20–25 years at the time of re-use.

Reliable lifetime assessment is critical — both from a risk management and investment perspective. Such assessments must consider operational history, degradation mechanisms, current condition, and expected performance over the new well’s full lifecycle.

Evaluating components like conductors, surface casings, intermediate casings, subsea wellheads and Christmas Trees is particularly challenging due to limited data availability, uncertain failure modes, difficult access for inspections, and high cost of data collection.

KEY QUESTION

How can we accurately and cost-effectively assess the condition, lifetime and risk of critical well components over time — especially when historical data is limited or inspections are difficult to perform?