There are several thousand old, abandoned wells (legacy wells) on the Norwegian continental shelf. Assessing the overall condition of the wells (quality of plugs, casing, and cement annulus) and monitoring any future leaks will be of great benefit, especially if the reservoirs where the wells are located are to be used for CO₂ storage or energy storage.
The LEGACY project focuses on accelerating the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and large-scale underground energy storage by offering innovative techniques for assessing, monitoring, and mitigating well integrity issues and potential leaks. This enables safe and cost-effective large-scale CO₂ storage in areas with older wells.
The methods, workflows, and tools being developed will be crucial for the rapid and reliable assessment, maturation, and subsequent management of a CO₂ storage site at the large number of locations with older wells.
Other project objectives:
- Communicate effectively with industry, state regulators and general public on legacy wells threats and opportunities,
- Develop an automated workflow for screening of legacy wells,
- Demonstrate tools for cost-efficient non-invasive monitoring of well integrity and leakage,
- Develop and validate strategies for efficient modelling and prediction of leakage rates,
- Develop strategies for mitigation/remediation of well integrity issues,
- Explore the possibility of using legacy wells to improve monitoring of storage sites,
- Develop recommendations for future well construction and abandonment to facilitate monitoring.
