Six months after a well casing failure on the P-pad, Cenovus Energy is developing a plan to restart the facility, pending approval from the Minister of Energy and Resources.
PAYNTON -- In a recent media release, Cenovus Energy has shared progress on the Rush Lake 2 P-pad continues, with plans in development to restart by year-end for parts of the field unrelated to a well casing failure in May.
The well, which was bringing up muddy, silty water from the steam injection, was brought under control on July 17. Once under control, site clean-up and remediation began, along with further investigating on why the failure happened.
"The company has completed a comprehensive seismic program to better understand the current state of underground formations across the Rush Lake area, which verifies the integrity of the caprock remains fully intact. This confirms the cause of the steam release was due to a well casing failure; however, the reason for this is still under investigation," said the media release.
As the company prepares to resume operations, plans will focus on the well pads that were shut down as a precaution when the steam release occurred. Well integrity checks will be completed on any pad before even being considered for restart and would be dependent on approval from the Minister of Energy and Resources.
"We are continuing to evaluate the integrity of wells across our thermal operations, completing in-depth well integrity checks on our wells at Rush Lake with multiple service rigs. Any well that shows impairments would be remediated or permanently abandoned. All the wells on P-Pad will be abandoned as a precaution," said the company.
While Cenovus has not made the costs of the steam release incident public at this time, they continue to monitor air and water quality at the site along with sampling groundwater and surface water tributaries, stating they are not detecting any H2S at the Rush Lake 2 site.
Clean-up, winterization activities and preparations for the eventual restart will continue in the coming weeks and area residents may see non-production drill and service rigs onsite and in the area, site construction and some flaring in the meantime.