Insights from the Evaluation of Sand Control Performance in Offshore Brazilian Southeast

Abstract

The performance of sand control systems is an important issue, constantly addressed in several technical forums. In the scenario of offshore Brazilian Southeast, improved sand control techniques solved the problems of formation damage and flow restrictions, but the well production conditions caused several well problems, even sand control failure. The analysis of producer wells with sand control has shown an interesting behavior, confronting the concepts adopted by Petrobras. As expected, for producer wells, the failure rate is low for open hole gravel pack and fracpack, higher for cased hole gravel pack and very high for SAS and ESS. However, in the case of injection wells, no appreciable failure was observed, regardless of the sand control type, which suggest the possibility of expand the application of SAS, and even ESS, for this type of well. Surprisingly, the few failures observed in horizontal wells did not occur in partially packed HOHGP. Those partially packed HOHGP (premature screen out) constitute 8% of total HOHGP operations, considering producers and injectors, with operational lives similar to the fully packed ones. This behavior suggests that the effect created by the gravel is essential only in the HOHGP near heel region, indicating that the OHGP could, potentially, be replaced by the association of SAS with ICD, modifying the sand control profile in the Brazilian Southeast. This work presents a performance analisys of sand control techniques, with conclusions and suggestions based on the data of 680 wells, covering 30 years of sand control operations in offshore Brazilian Southeast.