Well (Pad) of the Week – Eight times is geomechanics

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

Ian Fleming – Goldfinger

It has been a very long time since I have posted an article in the Well of the Week series. But fear not, faithful readers, I have been keeping a list of topics for when I have time to return to the WotW project. This hiatus is not for a lack of subject material but instead has been due to two reasons. The first is that my available time for such pursuits has been absorbed by the need to help our team of authors get the Atlas 2027 chapter on the Hydrodynamics of Abnormal Pressures finished by the December 31, 2025 deadline. The second distraction from the WotW is that I have been asked to submit an article on casing deformation to the Canadian Energy Geoscience (CEGA) Reservoir series on geomechanics.

While working on the latter, I noticed an opportunity to document the prevalence of casing deformation in the Montney and other unconventional plays. Figure 1 shows a pad of 8 wells drilled into the Montney. I chose this pad because every well experienced some form of casing deformation. The actual wells have been anonymized so as not to stigmatize this operator because this phenomenon of casing deformation is impacting the results for all operators.

Figure 1: Pad of 8 Montney horizontals, everyone of which experienced some level of casing deformation.

Well F experienced 5 significant obstructions with comments such as “Still milling. This obstruction is difficult to get through and returns in the junk basket show cement and shale. They do mill through but get stuck around this spot again when pulling a wiper trip. They are able to move through the tight spot.” Sounds expensive.

Well C admitted to skipping 4 stages due to casing deformation. Those are just a couple of the highlights (lowlights?) from the completion tours.

Milling out obstructions and other complications related to casing deformation costs money. Skipping stages reduces resource capture for both the operators and the provinces. Casing deformation is obviously a major challenge for the profitable development of resource plays.

But what does geomechanics have to say about this challenge? For an answer to that question you will have to wait for the July / August 2025 issue of the Reservoir.