Drinking Water in Oil and Gas Wells to be Abandoned

Abstract Around the world operators of oil and gas properties periodically face the necessity to abandon wells that do not have economic justification to produce oil and/or gas. This is a very dynamic activity during the whole life of an oil and gas endeavor which intensifies at the final production stage of the project. Worldwide, enormous quantities of water are still unexplored, nevertheless, there are millions of people without access to water. The current paper presents the methodology to identify between the wells to be abandoned and wells that cross aquifers able to supply water in quantity and quality to human usage for consumption, agriculture, or industrial purposes. This work presents the practices to select wells to supply adequate water for human usage among the candidates to abandon as well as the operations to clean, perforate, lift, install and start up the well to deliver water to the surrounding community. The above activities will be developed aiming to serve as a guide to operators, regulators and other stakeholders of the oil and gas industry in such a way that they can adopt those practices into the process of abandoning wells. The main target of the work is to present methodology and low-cost safe engineering practices to reequip the well to facilitate the access to surrounding communities to this necessary resource.