ISST-2018-Paper71_v2-1.pdf

Well permanent abandonment is nothing new. It is part of the natural life-cycle of an oil

and gas well. Since many oil fields are approaching the end of their concession period, well permanent

abandonment as part of the overall field abandonment project is gaining attention. Because this is

non-revenue generating, current industry approach is to execute with minimal cost. Some of the past

researches focus on optimizing the process or tools in the execution and in the cost estimation. This

research aims to identify overall factors that influence well permanent abandonment project cost, in

order to fill past-research gaps and contribute to the practical area of cost estimation and cost

monitoring. This paper presents conceptual research to find factors influencing well permanent

abandonment cost through literature review and experts’ judgement. Literature are journals pertaining

to the topic of project management and well abandonment. Experts are representative from

practitioners and academics who have been deeply involved with well abandonment projects.

Literature review yields 43 factors which then sent to experts to validate. 3-points Likert-scale

answers are then changed into mean vs standard deviation (SD) and plot into a cartesian graph. The

graph is then divided into 4 quadrants. Quadrant I are factors with high mean and low SD, quadrant

II are factors with high mean and high SD, quadrant III are factors with low mean and low SD and

quadrant IV are factors with low mean and high SD. Factors that fall into quadrant III (low mean, low

SD) and quadrant IV (low mean, high SD) are eliminated. There are also 3 factors revised and 3

factors added. The results are 43 factors, comprising of factors from project management aspect and

factors from the project characteristic itself, such as wells’ location, wells’ total measured depth,

wells’ mechanical condition, number of wells, project duration, weather, reservoir pressure, overhead

cost allocation, management and supervision quality, project team technical performance, price

fluctuation and planning and scheduling quality, among others.