Sand Control

Reasons For Sand Control

There appears to be no universal depth below which sand problems are not encountered, and sand problems have been recorded in wells as deep as 14000 fits. Basically stated, sand production occurs when the stresses on the formation exceed the strength of the formation. The stress on the formation sand grains is due to many factors, including tectonic actions, overburden pressure, pore pressure, stress changing from drilling and the drag forces of the producing fluids.

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Sand production problems often begin or become more serious when water production begins. Some of the reasons for this are:

1, Increased total fluid production, increase the drag forces across the sand. 2, Disturbance of the cohesive forces tending to hold the sand grains together as the water phase becomes mobile. 3, Dissolving or softening of the natural cementing material.

Incompetent Sands
1, Quick sand >The quick sand is the term often applied to completely unconsolidated formation sands. >This type of sand has no effective cementing agent and is held together only by small cohesive forces and compaction. >Wells producing from a Quicksand type of formation, characteristically produce a constant concentration of sand in the produced fluids. > Special coring tools must be used to obtain samples of Quicksand, and special gravel packing tools and procedures must be used to successfully gravel pack it.

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2, Partially consolidated Sands.
<>The second type of formation sand is Partially Consolidated sand. It has some cementing agents present, but it is only weakly consolidated. A core can usually be taken from this type of formation with a conventional core barrel, but the core crumbles easily. <>An open hole completion is possible with this type of sand, but without some means of sand control, the hole will collapse. Increasing overburden load on the formation continues to crush the sand as the reservoir is depleted.

<> Behind the casing , this type of formation sand crumbles and spalls, forming the small cavities or pockets which cause the slugs and clusters of sand to come into the well bore resulting in formation of bridges in the tubing.

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3, Friable Sands.

This third type of potentially troublesome sand is a Friable sand or semi competent sand which is well cemented and easily cored. Cores of this type of sand appearing strong enough that they do not look like they would allow sand to produce. However, produced fluid or gas readily erodes sand from the face of the formation as it flows into the well bore. Open hole completions can some times be successful in this type of formation as the flow of fluids is spread out over a much larger area of formation; thus the erosional forces are less.

Prediction of Sand Production

In a new area it is very difficult to predict sand production with current technology. There are four basic sources of information which help us attempt this prediction.

1, Drill steam Test 2, Cores 3, Logs 4, Production data- Sand concentration

Sand Control Processes

The basic processes can be broken into two main categories.

1, Mechanical, that consists in installing a filter (by far the most common). 2, chemical and physicochemical, that consists in reinforcing or stabilizing the inter grain bond.

Processes For Open hole Completion.

A, Screens Alone.
> To Control formation sand effectively and limit filter plugging, the slot of the screen will usually be chosen to retain the coarsest 10% approximately of the sand, which intern controls increasingly finer grained sand.

This Technique gives good result for coarse sand with a relatively homogeneous grain size.
The drawback of this technique is that, it causes to reduce the productivity when sand is fine grained .

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B, Gravel Packing. >The Gravel Packing is placed against the formation and is held in place by screens. >The Gravel acts as a filter and screen serves only to keep it in place. > The Gravel must be clean, calibrated with a selected grain size in relation to the formation sand.

Processes for Cased Hole Completion

A, Screens Alone.

The critical point is when the fluid passes the restricted cross-section of the perforations, which will be most obstructed by produced sand.

The sand that is retained by the screen slots fills up the space between the screen and the casing little by little and then fills up the perforations.
Pressure losses introduced at this point are usually prohibitive for liquids (oil and water) and so the process is normally not suitable in this case.

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B, Gravel Packing.

As screen s alone, perforations are the critical point, so the gravel emplacement technique must allow the perforations to be effectively filled up with gravel while at the same time maintaining its high permeability. The cross-sectional area must also be as large as possible for the fluid to pass through but not for sand particles from 20 to 40 mesh(0.84mm to 0.42mm) standard size.

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C, Sand Consolidation. > The aim of this method is not to create a filter to retain the produced sand but
rather to force or stabilize the bond between the grains of sand that make up the sand stone formation so that they are not entrained by the fluid flow. > For achieving the sand consolidation, the thermosetting resin is often injected into the formation which forms bonding between grains resulting in reduction of sand production into the well bore.

Gravels

Gravels

Screens

Gravel Pack

Gravel Pack

Gravel Pack

Gravel Packing

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