Offshore industry gets a fresh look at foamed cement

A research project undertaken by the US Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is shedding new light on what really happens to foamed cement as it is pumped deep down offshore wells during completions. The driving factor for the project has been the 2010 subsea blowout of the Macondo well in the US Gulf of Mexico (GOM) that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and claimed 11 lives. Cement specialists who are lending their expertise to the research said initial findings confirm long-held theories about how the 25-year-old technology performs. Some experts from the service companies have said the new data derived from this project will help them to find improved ways to make foamed cement and predict how it will work under various wellbore conditions with greater accuracy.