Guidelines on Relief Well Planning – Issue 2

These guidelines have been issued to help well-operators comply with the requirement for relief well planning as part of their OPEP (Oil Pollution Emergency Planning) for wells in the UKCS. They describe how to assess the complexity of a potential relief well and therefore whether a basic or complex relief well plan is needed. The suggested contents of the relief well plans are described. Considerations for sourcing equipment and schedule for relief wells are also considered. This version of the guidelines, issue 2, supersedes the previous version “Guidelines on relief well planning – Subsea wells – issue 1”, which was published in January 2012, having been updated to include all offshore wells, including jack-up drilled and platform wells.