Well integrity systems

Four systems.
Four failure modes.

A cement sheath fails for a reason. Each BETOSIM™ system is built around one of those reasons — and every one of them is engineered per well and validated to API Spec 10A / RP 10B-2 protocols before it is released.

The systems

Problem. Mechanism. Outcome.

Each system below is described the way our engineers describe it internally: what goes wrong, what the material does about it, and what the operator gets. Formulation-level data sits behind the NDA gate, not behind an adjective.

BETOSIM ULW

Ultra-Lightweight

Weak & depleted formations · lost circulation
Problem

Depleted reservoirs, weak or fractured formations and narrow drilling windows cannot carry the hydrostatic column of a conventional slurry. The cement is lost to the formation, the annulus is left partly filled and the barrier the well design assumed never actually exists.

Mechanism

Density is reduced through engineered lightweight phases and particle packing rather than by adding water or nitrogen — so the slurry loses weight without losing the solid structure that carries load. Free fluid is engineered out, keeping the column homogeneous through placement and set.

Outcome

A competent, load-bearing sheath placed in a formation that would have rejected anything heavier — full annular coverage, no losses, and a barrier that can be logged and defended. Validated at slurry density 9.1 ppg (SG 1.08) with zero free fluid.

BETOSIM EP

Elasto-Plastic

Stress cycling · pressure & temperature swings
Problem

Set cement is strong and brittle. Production drawdown, injection, stimulation, shut-ins and thermal cycling load the sheath in tension and shear, where high compressive strength is no defence. The sheath cracks radially or de-bonds from casing or formation, and a micro-annulus opens the path the barrier was built to close.

Mechanism

The system is engineered for mechanical behaviour rather than peak strength: a lower elastic modulus with the capacity to deform and recover, so cyclic strain is absorbed instead of concentrated. The design target is the stress envelope of the specific well, not a generic compressive figure.

Outcome

A sheath that bends where brittle cement breaks — sustained zonal isolation through the pressure and temperature cycling of the well’s production life, and materially reduced exposure to sustained casing pressure and the remedial work that follows it.

BETOSIM SH

Self-Healing

Long-term zonal isolation · well life
Problem

Integrity is rarely lost on day one. Micro-fractures and micro-annuli open years later, and the first evidence is a pressure at surface or a leak an inspection finds. By then the intervention is a workover: rig time, a squeeze, deferred production, and a barrier whose repair is itself a risk.

Mechanism

Reactive phases are engineered into the matrix and remain dormant until a fracture exposes them to the invading fluid. Contact triggers expansion and secondary product formation that closes the aperture at the point of the breach — autonomous repair, without intervention and without a signal from surface.

Outcome

Zonal isolation designed for the life of the well rather than its first year, and a sharply reduced probability of the remedial cycle. Validated at 1,126 psi 24-hour compressive strength at SG 1.21 with zero free fluid.

BETOSIM HY

Hybrid System

Combined demands · complex wells
Problem

Real wells rarely present one failure mode. A depleted interval sits above a cycled injector; a thermally loaded section runs through a formation that will not carry weight. Solving one constraint with a single-purpose slurry creates the next.

Mechanism

Density, elastic behaviour and healing capacity are treated as three axes of one design and balanced together for the interval in question — a single engineered system rather than a compromise between two products or a staged job that adds interfaces to the barrier.

Outcome

One system that answers the well as it actually is: placed where the formation allows, elastic where the well cycles, healing over the decades that follow — with a single continuous barrier and one QC chain to defend.

Results from the group’s validation programme; independent UK ISO 17025 re-verification in progress. Full worksheets available under NDA — request the technical dossier →

Validation

Engineered per well.
Validated to protocol.

No BETOSIM system is supplied against a datasheet alone. Every job carries a design record and a laboratory record, and the operator’s engineers are welcome in the laboratory when the design is proved.

Design basis
Engineered for the specific well from the validated formulation library — never a shelf product with the label changed. See the workflow →
Test protocols
Slurry design and testing to API Spec 10A and API RP 10B-2 protocols — rheology, thickening time, free fluid, fluid loss, compressive strength development and stability under the well’s conditions.
Witnessing
Validation testing can be witnessed by the client’s engineers or a nominated third party. We prefer it that way.
Field support
Pumping envelope, QC plan and on-site quality control through the licensee network, under the governance the licence imposes. How licensing works →
Evidence release
Formulation-level data and full laboratory worksheets are released under NDA to operators and their technical advisers.
Roadmap

CCUS, geothermal
and permanent abandonment.

The barrier problem does not end with hydrocarbons — it gets harder. Carbon storage, geothermal power and well abandonment each demand a cement sheath that survives on regulatory timescales rather than commercial ones, and each is a direct extension of the science already in the platform.

CCUS · In development

CO2 storage wells

Carbonic acid attacks conventional Portland systems; a storage licence may require the barrier to hold long after the operator has gone. Our development work targets barrier durability in CO2-rich environments over those timescales.

Every well that holds converts directly into stored tonnes that stay stored.

Geothermal · In development

Thermal-cycle endurance

Geothermal completions cycle harder and for longer than most oil and gas wells. The elasto-plastic science is the natural answer, extended for sustained high-temperature service and repeated thermal shock.

P&A · In development

Permanent abandonment

The North Sea decommissioning decade needs barriers that are placed once and verified once. Self-healing behaviour is precisely the property you want in a plug nobody will ever return to.

These are stated development directions, not commercially released products. We will describe them as available when the validation record supports it — and not before.

Bring us a well

The fastest way to evaluate BETOSIM is to put a real well file in front of our engineers — ideally one that has already given you trouble.

Talk to our engineers