Environmental Risk Arising From Well-Construction Failure – Differences Between Barrier and Well Failure, and Estimates of Failure Frequency Across Common Well Types, Locations, and Well Age

This paper will show the great majority of wells do not pollute. The purpose of this paper is to explain basic concepts of well construction and illustrate differences between single-barrier failure in multiple- barrier well design and outright well-integrity failure that could lead to pollution by use of published investigations and reviews from data sets of more than 600,000 wells worldwide.