Integrity Assessment of Offshore Subsea Wells: Evaluation of Wellhead Finite Element Model Against Monitoring Data Using Different Soil Models

Abstract

Understanding well conductor–soil interaction mechanism plays an important role in well integrity assessment. Evaluation of field data obtained from monitored offshore wells can provide valuable insights into the matter. This paper presents a comparison of the numerical results obtained from a full three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) analyses model of the blowout preventer (BOP), wellhead (WH), conductor, and surface casing versus the field measured data obtained during drilling operations. Sensitivity studies were also performed for several parameters that were considered important in the local well response analysis under observed sea state conditions. The conductor–soil analyses were simulated using the Winkler spring p–y curves obtained by two different approaches: American Petroleum Institute (API) RP2GEO and a recently developed model by Zakeri et al. The results of bending moments in conductor and surface casing have indicated good agreement between FE model results and the field measurements.