Impact of Geomechanical Parameters on Salt Creeping and Casing Collapse in Oil Wells

Casing collapse is considered one of the costliest problems that occurs in the oil industry, and it happens when thestresses or loads exceed the casing collapse pressure or due to casing wear, corrosion or salt creeping. X oil field,located in Iraq's southern east, A casing collapse phenomenon repeated within four wells, including well X-۱, and the saltcreeping may be the main ۱ Ali Nahi AL-Hasnawi : alinahiprdc@gmail.com reason because the collapsedcasing section is encountered by a salt formation that may be creeping under compression. In this paper,Lower-Fars formation had been specified as the highpressure salt formation that causes this problem accordingto the analysis of the provided data that included the depths of the collapse , log data and the final geological report. Anew suggested casing design had been suggested by using pore pressure, fracture pressure, and horizontalstresses that were estimated by interactive petrophysics software from the well log data. The proposed andcurrent casing designs were Simulated using Landmarkstress check software, and the proposed casing designindicates changing the grade from (L-۸۰, ۴۷ ppf) to (N-۸۰, ۵۳ ppf), which prevents the problem from recurring whendrilling new wells in the same field and is also economically feasible.