UN-cemented casing has been pulled.

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This graphic shows that the casing pipe that is not cemented into the well borehole has been cut at the bottom and pulled out the same way the tubing was. The casing pipe that has been cemented into the borehole cannot be removed (except sometimes later for coal mining — see later slide).  It is hoped that the cementing of the cemented casing pipe that is left in at the time of plugging was done right when the well was drilled and cemented.  If not there might be problems after the plugging is otherwise done right from that being done wrong during drilling.

[Note.  As this slide show has been created, Diversified has asked for a variance from the State for a shortcut on its plugging jobs.  It wants to be able to leave some of the casing in the well and then, in order to make  the cement bridges explained later, Diversified wants perforate holes in the production casing where the cement bridges need to be placed in order to create a barrier from gas etc. passing through the bridge.  Then Diversified wants to put cement at those appropriate depths inside the casing pipe, but also push cement through the perforations at those depths into the annulus (the space between the outside of the metal pipe casing and the rock that forms the outside of the borehole.) to complete the bridge barrier.   WVSORO has opposed this shortcut, particularly until a study is done why 20% of a sample of plugged wells in 13 counties are leaking methane.

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