Well safety and integrity evaluation of offshore wells: A review of past, present, and future

Accidents play an important role in the oil and gas industry because, among other consequences, they redefine definitions of safety. One of them is the Macondo accident, which happened in 2010 and changed the industry dramatically in terms of well safety and integrity. This work provides a literature review of well safety and integrity, divided into three eras: "the past" (pre-Macondo), "the present" (post-Macondo), and "the future" (digitalization and carbon neutrality). Our goal is to highlight the changes that the industry has undergone due to this event but also due to recent trends such as digitalization and carbon neutrality. The introduction contains a glossary of relevant definitions that are widely used in these subjects. The past reviews well integrity systems that companies had before the Macondo accident, illustrating their deficiencies compared to current systems. We also present available regulations, standards, and guidelines and what changed in them due to the accident. The present reviews current well integrity management systems (WIMS), their architectures, and studies of selected well barrier elements (fluid, BOP, wellhead, rock, and primary cementing). Finally, the future reviews ongoing trends such as the use of digitalization (through digital twins) to monitor and assess well integrity and the deployment of CCUS (carbon capture, utilization, and storage) wells to achieve carbon neutrality.