Last month I had the opportunity to attend a virtual workshop on Well Integrity hosted by NETL, where the research needs for subsurface energy infrastructure were discussed. There were  a series of interesting talks from international experts from academia, industry, and national laboratories over 3 days.

In the past years, the trend has been towards green energy and data-driven studies and in this event it was no different. Experimental and modelling studies on challenging environments, such as geothermal, as well as CO2 storage and hydrogen storage were presented. I am not very familiar with hydrogen storage but it makes sense, like most green energy it needs to be stored and underground storage offers a large-scale and long-term solution. There were great discussions on the importance of applying advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to get insights from open databases. It is advised to be careful using these databases since most wells have been sitting for a long time. And finally, talks on future developments moving forward, plugging and abandonment, how to better monitor methane leakages and ensure long-term integrity of wells.

Overall, it was a great opportunity to connect with experts and learn more about the current trends in well integrity. Thank you NETL for organizing this important event.