Abu Attifel onshore oil field (Libya) was discovered in 1968 and put in production in November 1972. The total average production is nowadays about 140,000 BOPD (22,260 m3/d) with 46 producing wells.

All the production wells were originally completed with carbon steel tubing, although the produced fluids contain CO2 - 4 % in the gas phase. After several years of production with minor downhole corrosion problems, several corrosion failures started to occur in the nineties at extremely high corrosion rate. In some cases corrosion attacks occurred although the water cut was negligible (lower than 1%).

A detailed corrosion study was initiated to investigate the problem in order to identify the most critical production wells and the priority of intervention for well; this paper reports the corrosion assessment results and the actions undertaken to control the corrosion. A review on occurred corrosion events is also reported.

Subject
Corrosion failures, Water, Corrosion rate, Flow velocity, Wetting, Corrosion attacks, Tubing, Salinity, Fluids, Risk management, Erosion corrosion, Martensitic steel, Oil
Keywords:
CO2 corrosion, carbon steel, erosion corrosion, flow induced localised corrosion, martensitic stainless steels, tubing
© 1999 Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of AMPP. Positions and opinions advanced in this work are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of AMPP. Responsibility for the content of the work lies solely with the author(s).
1999
Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP)
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