Emerging Skills Program — no certification exam
Well Integrity Management
Barrier thinking applied to wells: what the envelopes are, how to prove they are intact, and what to do the day one of them fails.
Why this matters
The problem this solves
A well is the only asset on a facility where the containment barrier is buried three kilometres underground and cannot be inspected the way a vessel can.
Well integrity is managed through barriers rather than through inspection, and that changes almost everything about how the work is done. NORSOK D-010 and ISO 16530-1 both frame it the same way: two independent envelopes between the reservoir and the environment, each with a defined element list, each verifiable, each with a stated action when it is lost.
The gap this programme fills is the one between the standard and the operation. Most teams can name the barrier elements. Far fewer have a defensible answer to sustained casing pressure on a specific well on a specific morning, or a written well-integrity status that an auditor and a driller would read the same way.
Before you enrol
Is this a certification?
The short answer is no, and it is worth being explicit about it rather than leaving it to be discovered later.
What this programme gives you
- Four days of instruction from engineers who manage well stock, not career trainers
- Barrier diagrams built during the programme for real completion types
- A working annulus-pressure diagnostic sequence you can take back
- An EIM certificate of completion
What it does not
- Not preparation for a certification exam — no certifying body examines this subject
- No API, AMPP or CSWIP credential at the end
- Not a well control certification, and not a substitute for IWCF or IADC
- Not a substitute for your operator’s own well integrity management system
If you need a recognised credential, start at certification exam preparation.
Who it's for
Roles this is built around
Well integrity engineers
Operating side
Owning the barrier status of a stock of wells and the evidence behind it.
Production and completions engineers
Any level
Making the intervene-or-monitor call when an annulus starts to build pressure.
Asset integrity managers
Cross-discipline
Answerable for wells alongside fixed equipment, without a wells background.
What it covers
The outline
An outline, not a weighted Body of Knowledge — nobody publishes weights for a subject with no exam behind it.
Barriers, not inspections
Why wells are managed by envelope rather than by thickness reading, and what follows from that.
The two-barrier philosophy
Primary and secondary envelopes, element by element, from reservoir to surface.
Barrier element verification
What counts as proof for each element, and the tests that only look like proof.
Annulus pressure management
Sustained casing pressure, thermal versus communication, and the diagnostic sequence.
Well integrity status and reporting
Classifying a well, and writing a status an auditor and a driller both read the same way.
Intervention and abandonment
When a well must be shut in, what a repair has to restore, and the barrier case for abandonment.
Outcomes
What you will be able to do
- Draw the barrier envelopes for a real well completion and name every element in each
- Decide what constitutes acceptable verification for each element, and what does not
- Diagnose sustained casing pressure and choose between monitoring, bleeding down and intervening
- Classify a well’s integrity status against a defined scheme and defend the classification
- Write a well integrity report that supports an operating decision rather than restating data
Standards referenced
What the programme works from
| Standard | What we use it for | Note |
|---|---|---|
| NORSOK D-010 | Well integrity in drilling and well operations | The primary reference |
| ISO 16530-1 | Well integrity — life cycle governance | — |
| API RP 90 | Annular casing pressure management for offshore wells | Used for the SCP module |
| API RP 14B | Subsurface safety valve systems | Verification of a key barrier element |
How it runs
Ways to take it
Formats offered — not scheduled dates. Live cohort dates live on the course page, so there is only ever one copy of a date.
| Format | Duration | Group size | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Live online | 4 days | Up to 15 | Split across sessions rather than run as consecutive full days |
| In-house | By arrangement | 6–20 | Delivered against your own equipment, your own findings and your own procedures |
FAQs
Questions people ask first
No, and the distinction matters. Well control is about regaining control of a well during drilling or intervention, and it is certified — IWCF and IADC both examine it. Well integrity is about proving and maintaining barriers across the whole producing life of the well, and no certifying body examines it.
No. The programme starts from the barrier concept rather than from drilling practice, which is deliberate — a good part of the audience is asset integrity people who have inherited responsibility for wells without ever having worked one.
NORSOK D-010 and ISO 16530-1 as the primary frames, with API RP 90 for annular pressure. Where they differ, the differences are pointed out rather than smoothed over — that gap is usually where the real operating question lives.
Want the full outline?
Tell us your role and what you are trying to fix, and we will send the programme outline and what it would take to run it for your team.