SPE 150810

The Impact of Sand Control Techniques on the Efficiency of Horizontal

Wells
Joseph. A., Arinze, .U., Ajienka, J.A and Ikeh, L, Department of Petroleum & Gas Engineering, University of
Port-Harcourt, Nigeria

Copyright 2011, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the Nigeria Annual International Conference and Exhibition held in Abuja, Nigeria, 30 July - 3 August 2011.
This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
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ABSTRACT
The production of formation sand into a well
is one of the oldest problems plaguing the
oil and gas industry. This is because of its
adverse effects on the well productivity and
equipment. In order to ensure safe
operation of facilities, reduce formation
damage
and
enhance
productivity,
operators spend millions of dollars on sand
control techniques. Some of the most
common sand exclusion techniques used
for horizontal completions in Niger Delta
include: the open-hole gravel pack (OHGP),
stand-alone screens (SAS) and expandable
sand screen (ESS).
This work involves a comparative analysis
of the different horizontal sand exclusion
techniques. In this work, evaluating the
impact of sand control techniques on the
production performance in horizontal wells
is evaluated. Some performance indicator
tools such as the well inflow quality
indicator (WIQI), performance efficiency,
completion efficiency, quantity of sand
produced and the production decline rate
after installation of the sand control
technique was used to compare the flow
performance of wells equipped with these
sand control techniques. The analysis
involves the use of analytical models and

software using the principle of nodal

analysis. For the Nodal analysis, the effect
of skin, reservoir pressure, gravel pack
length and gravel pack permeability was
investigated on the performance of the
gravel pack and stand-alone screen
completions techniques only. The results
showed that, the expandable sand screen
proved to be a better sand exclusion
technique in terms of performance followed
by stand-alone screens and then the openhole gravel pack.
INTRODUCTION
Production of formation sand is normally
associated with shallow, geologically young
formations that have little or no natural
cementation to hold the individual sand
grains together. Therefore, when the
wellbore pressure is lower than the
reservoir pressure, drag forces are applied
to the formation sands because of fluid
production. Produced sand has essentially
no economic value. Formation sand not
only plug wells, but also erodes equipment
and settle in surface vessels. Controlling
formation sand is costly and usually

involves either slowing the production rate

or using sand exclusion techniques.
Maximizing well productivity is pursued by
many ways: through sand management
(Mathis 2003, Oyeneyin et al, 2005), sand
and water management (Nguyen et al,
2007), by using suitable completion fluids to
prevent well completion damage (Milhone,
1983), by ICD screens implementation
(Fernandes et al, 2006; Wibawa et al, 2008)
or during drilling operations using
sophisticated tools in horizontal well
placement technology (Altman et al, 2007).
Perforation of cased and cemented
horizontal sections did not appear as an
economical alternative and, consequently,
open-hole completion with sand control
techniques was the path to follow for
horizontal wells. Tiffin, et al (1998) defined
a criterion for screen type selection, which
moved from the traditional drawdown
guidelines to downhole velocity limits
across the annulus packed area, and the
screen. The Tiffin, et als work focused on
case studies of failed completions and what
remedial or surveillance action should have
been taken. The authors offered a simple
method to optimize and safely operate sand
control wells (cased-hole FP and casedhole GP completions) based on a function
of flux through the screen. Bennett et al
(2000) stated that, for offshore wells with
water depths greater than 500m, open-hole
gravel packs with premium screens are
recommended. This guideline is based on
the concept that, for long life cycle wells,
additional barriers to prevent production
interruption and avoid or postpone
workover jobs should be considered.
When a well is completed without any sand
control measures and after some time

SPE 150810

produced sand due to increasing drawdown

and production rate, the well would be shutin and a mechanical or chemical sand
control technique would be applied
(Penberthy et al. 1997). Afterwards, the well
will be returned to production. Little has
been done on the impact of sand control
techniques on the efficiency of horizontal
wells. However, this work will be dealing
with this problem from the perspective of
comparing some of the sand control
techniques applied in horizontal wells. The
degree of severity varies from surface
equipments and tubing damage in terms of
corrosion and tubing failure to sanding up of
the production tubing resulting to production
loss. Therefore, the need to know the most
viable sand control method to apply in
horizontal wells during completion becomes
necessary.
In this work, some sand control techniques
(stand alone screen, expandable screen
and gravel packing) being used by
operating companies in the Niger Delta was
compared with respect to their performance
when applied in horizontal wells. Data
obtained is used to evaluate flow efficiency
and quantity of sand produced for each
technique in order to minimize corrosion
problems, damage to tubular and
production loss.
Factors to be considered in the selection
and design of a sand control technique
Several factors affect the selection and
design of a given sand control technique.
These include: reservoir temperature and
fluid properties; sand control material;
reservoir permeability; the length of the
completion interval; and the ratio of net to
gross pay thickness along the section. More
so, the number and distribution of reservoir

SPE 150810

intervals to be completed; the most

predominant drive mechanism and the
production rate are others to be considered
as well.
Well Performance Indicators
Modeling well performance, including
frictional pressure drop, is critical in
determining the appropriate sand control
technique. Some of the useful well
performance
indicators
considered
includes:

completed (initially, after workover, recompletion or stimulation). This is obtained

by carrying out BHP survey immediately
after completion or re-entry. The well inflow
quality
indicator
is
determined
by
comparing PIactual to PIideal. WIQI measures
how good a well is producing.
(2)
Where the PIactual and PIideal for a steadystate radial flow system are defined as
shown below:

Productivity Index (PI)

PI is defined as the potential production

rate per unit of drawdown. It is the inverse
of the slope of the IPR curve as shown
below:
P

(2)

(3)

(1)

The productivity of an oil well is quantified

by the productivity index. In general, the Pl
will remain constant over a range of
production rates, i.e. the IPR will be a
straight line as long as the flowing bottomhole pressure Pwf is greater than the bubble
point pressure (Pb). Below Pb, the inflow
performance relationship will become a
curve and rate dependent.

Where:
q
= production rate (Stb/d)
Pr
= reservoir pressure (psi)
Pwf = well flowing pressure (psi)
K
= permeability (mD)
H
= thickness (ft)

= drawdown (psi)
= viscosity (cp)
B
= formation volume factor (rb/stb)
Re
= reservoir radius (ft)
Rw
= well radius (ft)
= Completion skin
Sc

The Well Inflow quality indicator (WIQI)

The Well Inflow Quality Indicator (WIQI) is
another relative index for deciding the
efficiency with which a well has been drilled
and completed. This is defined as the ratio
of the actual productivity index of a well to
its productivity index if there were no skin.
It is a diagnostic parameter which gives an
indication of how good a well was

Decline rate
The decline rate of production can be
defined as a decay constant of any
production unit. It is the rate at which
production drops across a specific time
period, probably in days, months or in
years. The decline rate of a well indicates
how good a sand control completion

SPE 150810

technique is performing over some period

of time. In this work, an exponential decline
pattern is assumed and used to calculate
the decline rate for each well. The
exponential decline is defined as:
(4)
(5)
Whereas, the annual effective decline rate
is given as:
(6)
1
Where qi
qt
t

(7)
= initial production rate
= production at time (t)
= time (yrs)
= instantaneous decline
= effective decline rate

Results and Discussion

A total of six wells were investigated of
which two wells were completed with each
of the sand control methods under study.
The analysis involves the quantification of
the sand produced, the determination of the
decline rate and the well inflow quality
indicator.
In WELLS 1 and 2, the average sand
production before the installation of the
expandable sand screen are 30.12 and
27.12lbm/1000bbl
whereas
after
installation, sand production drastically
reduced to 0.6 and 0.4lbm/1000bbls
respectively. The flow efficiency (WIQI)
improved considerably and decreased
annually in an acceptable manner in both
wells.
However, the production decline rate for
well2
after
installation
showed
a

progressive increase while that of well1

doesnt follow a regular pattern.
The
increase in the decline rate could be as a
result of formation impairment due to poor
installation job as shown in Table 4 and 5
and Figures 1 to 3.
Tables 6 and 7 for WELL 3 and 4 had an
initial average sand cut of about 18.8 and
25.8lbm/1000bbl respectively. After the
installation of SAS, the sand cut drastically
dropped to 0.54 and 1.26lbm/1000bbl
respectively. From Figure 4 through 6, the
flow efficiency from both wells improved
significantly in the first year of installation
and then gradually declined following
depletion of the hydrocarbon.
From Figures 7 through 8 for WELL5 and 6
also shown in Tables 8 and 9 was initially
having average sand production of 32.74
and 29.54lbm/1000bbl respectively before it
was recompleted with open-hole gravel
pack (OHGP). After the OHGP installation,
sand production was dropped to 1.42 and
1.68lbm/1000bbls. The production decline
rate decreased after the completion job
while the well inflow increased by about
42%.
The average decline rate, WIQI and sand
production across the six wells is as shown
in Figures 10 through 12. It was observed
that for all the exclusion techniques
investigated, the ESS performed best
followed by SAS and then OHGP in
reducing the sand cut, increasing the flow
efficiency and decreasing the decline rate
for all the wells. This could be attributed to
its ability to adjust to changes in the
installed environment following its elastic
property.
More so, the effect of the installation of
OHGP and SAS on the reservoir pressure,

skin and permeability was also investigated

using well performance software. It was
observed that there was insignificant
changes as a result of varying gravel pack
permeability on the performance of the well
whereas there will be relatively no
production if the reservoir pressure is below
1700psia for OHGP as shown in Fig. 13
and 14 respectively. For the SAS, lower
skin and higher permeability values gave
higher productivity and vice-versa. This is
shown in Figs. 15 and 16.
The inflow result was further confirmed
using the prosper9.2 simulator for nodal
analysis. The results obtained showed that
the absolute open flow for the well
completed with standalone screen is higher
than that of the well completed with openhole gravel pack. The sensitivity plot for the
open-hole gravel packed well shows that
the higher the gravel pack permeability the
lower the pressure drop due to gravel pack.
The open hole gravel packed well showed a
decrease in inflow as the reservoir pressure
increases since there is no skin present but
there was no effect on the inflow at varying
gravel pack permeability. The well
completed with standalone screen showed
an increase in inflow as the skin reduces at
a constant reservoir pressure. At constant
skin value of 75, there was an increase
inflow
with
increasing
reservoir
permeability. The sensitivity plot for the well
showed that the pressure drop due to total
skin as a result of completion skin, damage
skin etc. increases as the reservoir
pressure increases. There was no nodal
analysis carried out for the expandable
sand screen.

SPE 150810

CONCLUSION
In lieu of the results obtained in this study, I
can conclude that there is no perfect cure
for sand production in our oil wells. The
best we can achieve is to minimize the
quantity of sand produced thereby reducing
the chances of downhole equipment failure,
corrosion of surface equipments and
plugging. If proper steps are taken, any
sand control technique will be adequate to
mitigate sand production problems in a well.
In choosing an appropriate sand control
technique for a well, proper analysis should
be carried out on the particle size
distribution, sand failure characteristics of
the producing formation and the reservoir
characteristics. From the comparison
carried out on the sand control techniques,
the expandable sand screen gave a better
performance followed by the standalone
screen and finally the open-hole gravel
pack.
RECOMMENDATIONS
In as much as we desire to minimize the
quantity of sand produced, we also hope to
achieve maximized production. Therefore it
is necessary to run analysis on the sand
control technique to be installed as it
affects:
i.

The nature of the wellbore and

completion requirement.

ii.

The reliability of the sand control

technique.

iii.

The effect of the sand control

technique on production.

iv.

The economics involved in installing

the sand control technique.

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Netherlands. pp 1-14.

SPE 150810

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Fig. 3 Sand production before and after installation

of ESS

Fig.1: Production decline rate before and after

installation of ESS

Fig.4: Decline rate before and after installation of

SAS

Fig.2 Well inflow quality indicator before and after

installation of ESS

Fig.5: Well inflow quality indicator before and after

installation of SAS

Fig.6: Sand production before and after installation

of SAS

Fig.7: Decline rate before and after installation of

OHGP

SPE 150810

Fig.9: Sand production before and after installation

of OHGP

Fig. 10: Average sand production of the sand exclusion

techniques after installation

Fig. 11 Average production decline of the wells

completed with these sand control techniques
Fig.8: Well inflow quality indicator before and after
installation of OHGP

SPE 150810

Fig. 16: Effect of Varying reservoir performance on a

SAS completion
Fig. 12: Average well inflow quality indicator of the
wells completed with these technique

Fig. 14: Effect of varying reservoir pressure on

OHGP completion

Fig. 13: Effect of Varying gravel pack permeability in

an OHGP completion

Fig. 15: Effect of varying skin on SAS completed well